The boys have their own little Christmas tree in their room. They chose ornaments that they knew were theirs (and they continued to steal more off of the big tree well after I asked them to stop). Needless to say, they have a unique decorating style.
In 2008 Bruce had an idea to put on an Olympic competition for his Section at JPL during the time when the Summer Olympics were happening. He and his colleagues then organized a four-event (running, cycling, chess and Boggle), multi-day competition, complete with a torch relay, and opening and closing ceremonies. For the closing ceremony, he made a film showing highlights from the events. It was a huge hit.
Last week, the person organizing this year’s Section Christmas party asked him if he could do short promo film as a teaser for the 2012 Section Olympics. So, here is the fruit of his (and Aaron’s) weekend labor.
In an effort to retain some semblance of normalcy during our remodel, and because our front window screams out for a Christmas tree, we spent a good portion of today gettin’ Christmassy. We went and got a tree — luckily I was able to talk Ezra out of the blue-flocked one.
It’s up! Man, that’s a tall one.
After I hauled all the boxes up from the basement, the boys had a blast going through all of the ornaments. (Fun for them; nervous breakdown for me — some of these ornaments are very old and fragile!)
After an emergency trip to Target to get more lights, Finn and I started putting the ornaments on the tree. (Ezra and Bruce started working on his Aveson family project.) It was chaos.
But after a while the tree was done, the stockings were hung, and the room looked like this.
And the train is running.
It feels a lot like Christmas around here.
Our kitchen remodel is officially underway … although demolition was postponed until Tuesday. However, on Friday they came and removed the old appliances, moved the fridge and the dishwasher for safekeeping, and taped off the floors and doorways. It now looks like this.
We had lots of help from Finn when we cleared out the kitchen last week.
And we’ve moved into our temporary barebones kitchen (in the dining room). I like to call it Camp Moision. It has all (well … both) of the basic necessities: coffee and cold cereal.
After planning this remodel for months, we are more than ready for it to start. And, even though I’m sure there will be more delays, I’m hopeful we won’t go too far beyond the 8-10 weeks we were told the project would take. It’s gonna be hell. But a couple of my friends who have been through remodels tell me it’s like childbirth — it hurts like nobody’s business, but I won’t remember the pain the minute I lay my eyes on my new kitchen.
Bruce and I had a lovely birthday dinner-and-a-movie date last night. And we had our server take a picture of us. So I thought I’d post it.
Ezra made me a birthday card at school and gave it to me yesterday.
Things I love:
1. He signed it “Ezra Moision;”
2. We have party hats on; and
3. He draws me tall and skinny.
Love that boy.
A few random quotes that have entertained me recently. All were while we were in the car; all at different times.
Finn: Mommy, do you know that sometimes my penis gets cold?
Ruby: Do you guys have an Advil calendar?
Ezra: Finn, you are my favorite person in the family.
Everyone had school yesterday for the first time in over two weeks. It was lovely — I got some Christmas shopping done and generally just enjoyed the quiet of the morning. At the end of his day at Cottage, Finn enjoyed some quiet time of his own — with Teacher Sahar.
So, we had a little windstorm this week. Wednesday night I was down at Cottage for a meeting and it wasn’t windy at all. However, as my friend Julia and I headed closer to home after the meeting we saw the wind picking up. I remembered, when we hit the Hill exit on the freeway, that I’d read reports of high winds expected. I’d forgotten. As we headed up Hill, it was like a different world — trees had already fallen over into the street, debris was everywhere. As she dodged another tree, Julia said, “This is crazy. I’m expecting zombies to come running down the street at any moment.”
Turns out we had 80-100 mph winds that night, a very rare occurrence for us. They rattled our windows — blowing two of them open — and whipped outdoor furniture, branches, palm fronds, leaves, etc. all over the neighborhood. We fared OK in the end — a few branches came off one of our giant oaks, a few more came off our neighbor’s giant pine (luckily we had moved our cars out from under it) and we had quite a bit of debris around, but no real damage. We did lose power from Wednesday night to Friday morning and phone/internet/TV service was out until Saturday afternoon.
Here’s what the driveway looked like the next morning. The trash cans had quite an adventure.
A tree across the street broke.
Our patio furniture took a beating and the barbecue cover flew off.
Not all of our neighbors fared as well as we did. This giant tree is across the street from Julia’s house, two blocks away from us. It took out three cars.
The kids got into the act of helping with the cleanup. Here’s Ezra with Julia’s daughter, Sadie.
And Finn.
Ezra and I took a walk early this morning and took some pictures of the devastation. They’ve cleared a lot of the tree away, so now we could see the cars underneath. Pretty awful.
This tree about three blocks away from us was totally uprooted, as were hundreds of others around town.
It took out a block wall on the way down.
All in all, we are feeling extremely lucky.
After months of planning, talking, budgeting, delays, more talking, more delays, the day has finally come! The landscapers showed up at 8:00 this morning to start tearing into the front yard. Here’s the end of day progress. Lawn be gone!
And, we have an actual start date for the kitchen remodel: December 12th! It’s about to get a whole lotta crazy around here!
We had Ruby and Chapin over for a play date this afternoon and the kids decided they wanted a Kids Club. So they made a sign. Well, Ezra made a sign.
What he was trying to say was:
Members: Ruby, Chapin, Ezra, Finn
Kids Club. No grown-ups allowed. If you come in you will be punched in the butthole.
Lovely. But seeing as he spelled it “panched in the bat hol” I just have to laugh. Needless to say, Cari and I stayed away. Neither of us wanted to be panched in the bat hol.
I was parent-teacher in Finn’s class today for the first time in a long time (Bruce has taken the last two shifts) so I took the opportunity to take some pictures. Being the first day back after the long Thanksgiving weekend, it was a high-energy, big emotion day. We had lots of fun and, as usual, I’m completely worn out. Here’s some of what we did.
We brought a box of Bernie’s old woodworking stuff (wheels and decorative items) for the kids to use in their creations. They really enjoyed it!
We played in the sand.
Here’s our little sandcastle with Finn’s treasure poked in the top.
During group time with Teacher Sahar (with whom Finn is head-over-heels in love), we built with little marshmallows and toothpicks.
And we had story time.
Here are Finn’s creations of the day.
We got to go to Laguna with the Bannings (well, three out of the four of them, anyway) again this weekend — a much welcomed post-Thanksgiving mini-vacation. First up on Friday afternoon was a walk to the beach for Cari, Bruce and the kids.
I, on the other hand, got a nap … in this perfect spot on the deck.
Saturday, we took a morning trip to the little aquarium in Dana Point, which was mildly successful but I think we were all just too sleepy to really enjoy it. After a little rest back at the house, we took the kids down to the beach where a good time was had by all. Here are some of my favorite pictures.
After the kids did more running and jumping than I can imagine doing in a whole week, we finally made it over to some tide pools. Lots of warm water for the kids to jump in and some really interesting sea life.
Bruce found the tiniest hermit crab ever.
Ezra and Ruby really enjoyed the tide pools.
We managed to get the kids out and back to the house without too many meltdowns. The busy day paid off — they were all conked out by 7:30.
More pictures are here.
The little cactus that Ezra picked out at the Cactus Center a few months ago is blooming. It’s very exciting.
We’ve been looking, along with some friends, for some activities for Ezra and his fellow first-graders to add to and broaden the academics they’re learning at school. Bruce, being a former 4-H-er immediately thought of this group. In fact, he went so far as to pull out his old 4-H hat (he was apparently quite a superstar).
The songs and motto recitals followed shortly.
He dialed down the crazy for the actual 4-H meeting. There’s an Altadena-Pasadena group already established, although it’s small and mostly filled with much older kids. For this meeting, there was a cooking activity. I can’t remember the name of the dish, but it was basically a meat filling inside little pastries. Ezra loves cooking and was happy to participate. Here he is assembling one.
And here he is eating the final product.
