Suzanne Turns Eight

Suzanne's 8th birthday was on the same day as Elizabeth's stage production of A Knight at Dawn. We all enjoyed the play (it was much more understandable than the night before when Suzanne's class did the same play -- because the kids were older, of course).

After the play, we fulfilled a wish by going to Baskin-Robbins. Unfortunately, the B-R near our house is kind of urban, and grimy, and it was surprisingly busy for a Wednesday in December. And the young woman behind the counter was clearly new, as she kept having to consult laminated recipe books in order to make some milkshakes.

But we had a lot of fun (and enjoyed the sweets).

Elizabeth in her costume. The show was great!

Happy Birthday, Suzanne!

Blowing out the candle. I wonder what she wished?

Experiment

I've uploaded this from my PC, but it originated on my phone and therefore is backed up to Google Drive. The question is: if, after I've uploaded it from my PC, if I delete it in Google Drive, will it disappear from Elizabethtown?

Suzanne drooling over the gingerbread house at Aaron and Wendy's solstice party on 12/21/18.

The Snow Ritual

The children have descended into madness. They are so desperate for snow, that they have adopted a snow-summoning ritual from a comic strip called Cul de Sac. Despite the fact that the comic strip is awesome, I am skeptical as to the efficacy of this so-called snow dance.

Elizabeth and Suzanne did it about a week ago, and  nothing happened. Of course, the night time temperature was 54 degrees, so it was a long shot. Tonight, we are looking at  temperatures approaching 32. Which means a nudge from magic could make a difference.

Here is what the girls did. Time will tell if they were effective.


 

Happy 50th Birthday, Uncle Scott!

This is way late, but what can I say? Great art takes time.



Also, I feel like in my little bit I appear super drunk. I wasn't. As soon as Suzanne turned the camera on me, I forgot entirely what I was going to say.

The Warriors

I learned today that one of my favorite movies is rated by Common Sense Media as 8+, meaning I can watch it with my 7- and 10-year old. This was exciting to me. The movie is Speed Racer by the Wachowski Siblings. I watched it years ago when Barb and Elizabeth (Suzanne not having at that time been a twinkle, etc.) were traveling. I loved it. I had zero familiarity with the cartoon that it's based on, but I couldn't help but fall in love with the humor, the action, and the beauty of the film.

So I told Elizabeth that I wanted to watch it for Family Movie Night. She was unenthusiastic. I told her, "If I were collecting movies on disc, this would be the second movie I'd buy." Naturally, she asked, "What would be the first?"

The Warriors, of course.

So we talked for some time about The Warriors. And it resulted in this picture. If I die tomorrow, I will die contented.

Elizabeth's depiction of a showdown between a Warrior and a Mime, based 100% on my oral history.

Lice Dreams

Suzanne got lice... again. Why do these children get infested with lice so often? I never get lice. Don't believe I ever did, even as a seven year old. But Suzanne was scratchin' and scratchin' at her old noggin, and turns out she was doing it with good reason. LICE!

So Barb's been toiling away for going on three days to rid her cranium of the vermin. It's not easy. Barb had an expensive lice comb that worked wonders on nits. But either the tines of the comb spread apart, or the nits got smaller, because it no longer works as it did.

So it's a lot of labor for Barb (plus, other parents politely decline playdates with the lousy Suzanne, which is rough on a vacation week), a lot of discomfort for Suzanne, and ... well, not much of an impact on Elizabeth and me. Although, I was the architect of the precarious light tower that allowed Barb to shed some light on the subject.

My Thanksgiving wish is that Suzanne is lice-free soon. (Elizabeth pointed out to me that there are no such things as Thanksgiving Wishes; Thanksgiving is for being content with what you have. I'm thinking, Even lice!?)

Elizabeth gives support to her suffering sister.

Suzanne amused herself many ways, not least of which was blowing bubbles.

Again with the bubbles.

The light rig. Eventually, I realized my bike stand (the tripod that holds my bike when I need to work on it) was a better choice than a stack of chairs and stools.

Happy Birthday, Uncle Mark! (2018 Edition)

My plan for this video seemed simple, but as with so many "simple plans," it was way too ambitious. I tried three or four times, and then gave up and filmed this simpler version.

No matter. The point is: we love you Uncle Mark and hope to celebrate many more birthdays with you.

(And if I get my sh*t together, I will cut together the fail videos and, hopefully, provide some amusement.)



 

A Tale of Two Kitties

Today, while Grandma was sitting with Baby, Elizabeth shared some leisure time with Tinkertoes.

posted from Bloggeroid

Dune(s)

It's a sign of how lax I've been to keep up this blog that I haven't yet posted about our trip to the Oregon Dunes in July of this year. We went there with Aaron and Wendy and their kids and shared a campsite not actually on the dunes, but within a few minutes walk.

They are spectacular. Barb and I visited them once before, prior to Elizabeth's arrival. I had forgotten how magnificent they are. Aaron claimed that author Frank Herbert was inspired by these dunes to write his classic science fiction novel, Dune. They certainly are inspirational.

The kids loved running around, jumping off the dunes, rolling downhill, and digging giant holes in the sand to hide from the relentless wind coming off the ocean. It's a harsh environment, with no shade and lots of windblown sand. Also, walking in the loose sand for any distance is a chore. But that was no matter to the children who had a great time. As for myself, I had a great time sitting on the sand watching them.

The campground, billed as a "double," was tiny.

Walking is hard work in this soft sand. There was a way to get to the beach by walking through the dunes, but we decided it would be too much for the kids (and maybe the adults).

That's Elizabeth jumping.

 

Suzanne!

Elizabeth, Lily and Suzanne leaping.

Elizabeth Style

posted from Bloggeroid

Lester Bangs

For a little while there, Suzanne was very interested in having bangs, but she was also scared. I get this!  When you have long hair, bangs are a huge commitment. Suzanne's best friend Anika had bangs. Maybe that's where this came from. In any event, Suzanne enjoyed simulating bangs (by pinning up her hair, etc.) but in the end did not cut her hair into bangs.

 

 For which I'm grateful.

Halloween Twenty Spook Teen

Halloween 2018 was the usual mix of incomprehensible costumes and rain. Suzanne went as Carmelita Spats*. Do you know who that is? Neither does anyone else! But she loved it, and I loved seeing her hair curled into ringlets, which Barb did three times -- a lot of effort on both Barb's and Suzanne's parts. Once for the Harvest Festival, once for a costume party, and once for ole Halloween itself.

Elizabeth, as you certainly can't tell from the photo, was The Monster Under the Bed. I had suggested that we suspend a toy bed above her head to give folks at least a fighting chance of understanding her costume. My suggestion was roundly rejected.

No matter. The kids had fun embodying their characters, and they came home with a huge haul of candy. This was the first year when I stayed home and greeted trick-or-treaters while the kids went out with Barb and Wendy. I kind of liked it, as I am a fuddy-duddy. I am trying to resist the transformation into fuddy-duddiness, but I'm 48 and it gets harder and harder with each passing year.

I really love how my kids consider Halloween costumes all about THEM. They don't care if YOU don't get it. They are having fun, and if part of that fun is confounding the adults, all the better.

That's Lily as a cardboard box, Elizabeth as The Monster Under the Bed, Suzanne as Carmelita Spats, and Kai as a black panther (not, I'm pretty sure, the superhero The Black Panther).

Elizabeth organizing and categorizing her candy. Probably a quarter of the haul was donated to the Candy Fairy, who ensures that the girls get candy at the next candy-oriented holiday.

*Carmelita Spats is a not-major character in the 13 books called A Series of Unfortunate Events. These books are Suzanne's Harry Potter. Carmelita is a villainous brat who refers to her enemies as "cakesniffers." Suzanne, who never dresses up -- she never wears a dress! -- seemed to have a lot of fun pretending to be the fancy-schmancy Miss Spats.

Born in Arizona/Moved to Babylonia

The Oregon of Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI -- a frankly inferior name to Syracuse's Museum of Science and Technology, or MOST, which my father named) has a traveling King Tut exhibit. We had the opportunity to preview the exhibit for cheap because Elizabeth is in the Talented & Gifted program at school. So, for two hours we had free access to the museum -- and access to the King Tut exhibit was only five bucks. Great deal!

Elizabeth and Suzanne had carefully laid out plans: one hour for the Tut, one hour for the other, more fun rooms where you can do things like be in a simulated earthquake, or make a stop-motion animation movie, or hold a walking stick insect.

So we stood in line for thirty minutes to get tickets to Tut. Then we stood in an antechamber (if you will) watching a video (that played three times in a loop) and waiting to get access to the Tut exhibit. Then we were funneled into a theater where we watched an eight minute video about Howard Carter (the guy who led the expedition that found the tomb). The movie was interesting!  But it was a movie.

After that, we moved through a series of tableaux that recreated Carter's discovery of the tomb of King Tut. It was pretty cool! Then we went upstairs to where all the artifacts were laid out for closer inspection. Also interesting and beautiful -- but 100% of what we looked at were reproductions. Even the mummy! It was a 3D printed model of the real King Tut mummy, based on a CAT scan or MRI or something. So... the whole experience was akin to going to a fake Louvre, and seeing a fake Mona Lisa and a fake David (which is not at the Louvre, but you get the idea).

The kids and I had a great time, until we realized we'd run out of time. As we were leaving the museum, we squeezed a few minutes of fun out of the animation studio, and had the close encounter with the walking stick bug, but both girls left a little crestfallen that their night at the museum hadn't amounted to more than looking at reproductions of Egyptian treasures.

This is what Howard Carter saw upon first entering the tomb. Although the front door was sealed, it appeared that tomb robbers had entered through a back way, probably shortly after the funeral. Which would explain the jumble of stuff. And who knows what went missing!

This shows the removal of the coffin from the sarcophagus, which was inside another sarcophagus, which was inside another sarcophagus, which was inside three layers of shrines -- the shrines were increasingly small gilded boxes nested inside each other like matryoshka dolls.

It was a small space. Getting the stuff from the burial chamber out was an enormous task that took over 80 days.

The Treasury.

Detail on one of the shrines. Beautiful, and nuts.

This is one of the shrines. They built three of these, one inside the other. And inside the smallest one was....

...the Sarcophagus. Inside this was another sarcophagus, and then a coffin. And then a mummy wearing a mask. These guys were nothing if not thorough.

Heading upstairs.

King Tut's chariot.

Sandals. Must be of a rich guy.

Believe it or not, this is a perfume bottle.

Here's the 3D-printed mummy!

My girls collaborating with other kids to complete the puzzle challenge that was part and parcel of the exhibit. Go team!

Nuns

A recent Elizabeth doodle. Possibly inspired by the musical Newsies (which is worth seeing -- the Broadway version; I can't vouch for the Christian Bale movie from the 90s.)

I really like how clean this is.

posted from Bloggeroid

Block Party '18

We had a nice, subdued and rainy block party. We met some new neighbors and connected with the old neighbors. There was a fair amount of speculation about Stan's House, which is currently for sale at a ridiculous price off $375,000 (down from the original and more ridiculous $400K).

Elizabeth organized her annual scavenger hunt, which was met with mixed results. Elizabeth is pretty tough with the puzzles. She wanted to do a treasure hunt game, but after I (as her crash test dummy) failed twice on the clues, I declared it impossible. She ended up with just the scavenger hunt, which turned out pretty well.

Barb had invited the local firefighters, who showed up just after all the kids had run off to quarters unknown. So the adults did their best to geek out on the fire fighting equipment before they drove away, sirens blaring.

We had a great time.

Suzanne Loves Dogs

Suzanne is so much a friend to dogs that she sewed (with a little help from her Mom) pajamas for Ruf-Ruf, her favorite stuffed animal.

When Elizabeth was painting faces at the Block Party, Suzanne choose to be transformed into a dog.

She really, really, really wants a real dog, but so far Barb and I have held steadfast in our refusal. But it's hard to resist her cute puppy dog face!

posted from Bloggeroid

Face Painting

The annual block party is coming up. Elizabeth really wants to provide face painting as a service. We got her a starter kit, and of course Suzanne was her first subject.

posted from Bloggeroid

Visitors from the East

Scott and Melissa visited for week! Very cool of them to make the effort and spare no expense to fly 3,000 miles from New York to Oregon. We were so happy to spend time with them, and, for me, to see Scott hang out with Mom.

Anson came down from Seattle and we hung out on the property, grilling and chilling, as you might say. Julie Pedersen came by with her daughter Kate for dinner and a visit on Sunday night. We haven't seen those guys for a few years, so it was a good opportunity to catch up.

After those few days in Portland, we went to a rental house ("rustic cottage," it was called, and appropriately so) on the Molalla River. The house is built on the point of land at the confluence of Trout Creek and the Molalla. It was preternaturally chilly in the house, but we didn't mind. Scott, Barb, and I also didn't mind the ICE COLD water that we plunged into from the littoral rocks. So refreshing!

Back in town we had a double date (sans kids -- thanks, Grandma) at a semi-fancy restaurant, went zip lining in the canopy of a forest, toured the Japanese Garden, explored Powell's City of Books, and saw a movie (everyone but me).

Now brace yourself for a ton of pictures!

It was a blast to have a circle of friends on Mom's front porch. She loved coming out and socializing with the youngsters. In the past, she was in her forties hanging out with teenagers. Now the teenagers are in their forties.

Scott and Mom had a great rapport.

We had a good time at the Chinese Garden, but it simply inflamed Melissa's desire to see the Japanese Garden. As we learned, they are VERY different. Plus, the koi were more active than usual, which was nice.

Breakfast at Jam on Hawthorne. Barb and I have been wanting to go here forever, but on weekends there's a line out the door -- and has been for years! We went there on a Monday and didn't get seated instantly. It was still doing good business. But our meals were great. Melissa got a crazy Bloody Mary with a full piece of candied bacon as a garnish. The only fly in the ointment was Elizabeth was unaccountably grumpy. But we survived.

The Rustic Cottage. Overall, pretty comfortable. To the left, a hot tub. To the right, a picnic table and grill and then the icy waters of Trout Creek.

That water was very cold. Holy moley, it was cold. But Barb, Scott, and I all plunged, and we were all  the better for it.

Scott braving the super cold waters of Trout Creek. For some reason.

Elizabeth working in her sketchbook by the creek.

Taking a snack break on our hike.

That's us in the hot tub, surrounded by nature. You can barely see it in this picture, but the river was visible to us from the hot tub. Very nice!

Scott did an amazing job grilling steaks under trying circumstances. The grill itself was so far from the bed of coals! He pulled it off, pro that he is, and we had a very nice meal.

The first night we had a campfire, the girls were disappointed by the absence of s'mores. Barb and I had just not been thinking of this as a camping trip. The next day, Scott and Melissa made a special trip to a store to buy graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows. The girls were delighted!

 

Look how happy Suzanne is to have a chocolate covvered marshmallow!

Barb on the approach to the waterfall. This place was magical!

Suzanne wanted to walk through this drain pipe that shuttled the water from the waterfall under the road and into the tributary. I encouraged her to do it, but I was wearing shoes, not sandals, so didn't want to accompany her. She (wisely) didn't care to venture into Pennywise territory without an adult. Thankfully, Barb was wearing sandals, so she took both girls through.

Scott communing with the waterfall.

This was the stretch of river near the secret waterfall. To the right of those cliffs is a trail, that leads to something wonderful.

At The Woodsman Tavern for double-date night. Barb insisted we try oysters, and I think we all were happy we did.

Both kids wanted nothing more than to spend time attached to Scott or Melissa.

    

At Double Mountain. Melissa and I got the same sandwich and then looked on enviously as Scott scarfed down his much better looking reuben.

We went to the Japanese Garden and it was awesome. It always is.