Alana feeds us again

We told Andrew and Rian we'd go out for dinner and a movie, but it was easier, cheaper, and quicker to go to Alana's for her dinner leftovers: Pork roast and gravy with potatoes and vegetables. Then we all (except Maiara) went to see The Golden Compass, Alana for the second time. It was great - pretty close to the book and very well done. Andrew noted that it ended slightly earlier than the book, probably so it could end on a high note. The books are pretty dark.
Mali was happily sucking away on Rian's soda - not knowing it was coke. So she was caffeinated and giggly all the way home, and started cleaning her room at 10:30. Maybe caffeine will be good for her, but I'd still prefer she wait before joining the mass of caffeine addicts blanketing the globe.

Dinner and Stardust

Alana invited us over for dinner and a movie: A bean soup and a bean/sausage/rice casserole, and the movie Stardust. I loved the movie - kind of like Princess Bride, though a bit weirder and not quite as funny. The stuff about stars reminded me of the book DogSbody.
Andrew went to dinner and a movie with Rian and her parents. They went to see the second National Treasure movie.

Partied out.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon painting the bead board in the downstairs bathroom, and Andrew spent the day at Rian's playing on her new Wii. Susy took Mali and her sewing machine to JoAnne's, where it has been shipped off to the sewing machine hospital.
Last night we all just vegetated, after eating Susy's delicious meatloaf. Well, everyone but Andrew, who was frightened of it. He put together his own dinner from apples and peanut butter, bread and cheese, and carrots. Afterwards we just watched our last Veronica Mars of the disk and went to bed early.

Mali and Andrew are both over at Rian's now, Wii-ing. I brought Rian home with Andrew after swim practice to ensure he ate a decent lunch. I cooked eggcakes/Swedish pancakes for both him and Rian while they played a rousing game of Candyland with Mali. Then they all walked to Rian's.
I am about to fight with the bathroom sink and install a new faucet. Woohoo!

Dog Birthday!

December 27th: We had a bithday party for Moose and Max, who turned one year old. No cake, though Alana brought over all the leftover desserts from her Boxing Day party, along with Maiara, Samira, Ryan, and Max. Nancy made a salad and brought the dog's honored mother, Tinkerbelle, along with Paul and the kids. Pablo was healthy enough to come over too, along with Rocio and Matias. And of course my newest daughter Rian was also here for the festivities.
The people and dogs all had a great time. Alana brought presents for the dogs, and the kids helped play with them. Susy and I contributed teriyaki pork, garlic green beans, and brown rice to the dinner. Kids took over the kitchen and adults captured the dining room, except poor Ryan who got stuck in the kitchen with the kids.

Tinkerbelle sadly did not get to go home with her family, who were leaving in the morning for a long vacation in Arizona. We are watching Tink for the next nine days. So far it's been a breeze - she's pretty mellow, yet good at entertaining Moose. She tried to trick us into carrying her up the stairs, but we didn't fall for it. She makes it up and down fine, but only after it's obvious that she's not going to get magically transported upstairs, and that no one is coming back down.

Boxing Day

Alana's traditional Boxing Day party was a great time! About 35 people were there, and we knew most of them. Mali had fun with Rachel and Zoë, and Hannah and Rachel's sister Julia discovered each other. Moose had fun with Max, though they were shuffled outside for much of the party. Tinkerbelle did not come for the party this year. Last year she came because she was pregnant with Moose and Max and several other puppies, ready to pop, and required monitoring. She popped the next day, which made for exciting times.
Andrew brought Rian, and Matias disappeared with NancyD's twins to play pool downstairs. Sadly, Pablo stayed home sick. Alana's friend Cookie made a fantastic chocolate ameretto cake, and NancyD brought delicious appetizers. Alana made her standard salmon, which everyone loves (except the fish-haters.)
Paul went second in the gift exchange and won himself thong underwear, picked out by Maiara and Alicia. No one traded with him. Nancy won a Candle-Topper - for retopping candles, of course. Susy was pleased with her vibrating neck pillow, NancyD with her paperwhites, and I came home with a can of poppycock.

Merry Christmas!

Mali slept until 8:16, so we had until 8:30 before she and Andrew roused us for the great opening. Andrew said they have a deal: whoever wakes up first wakes the other one. There's really not any question as to who that would be.
At 10:00 we headed to Tsulan, Tom, and Tiana's for breakfast, and met Pablo, Rocio, and Matias there. We all stayed and watched A Muppet Christmas Carol. We just got home, and Rian is here. In an hour we're going to Paul and Nancy's for a ham and smoked turkey dinner.

Merry Christmas Eve Day!

Here's some pictures from GrandmaLil's 95th Christmas Birthday. We had a great time at Bob and LIana's house on Oyster Bay. Andrew hid out downstairs on the X-Box 360 with his cousins for most of the night. Mali was a great sport helping Grandma open her presents.

Holidays Begin! and Jesus Christ, Superstar

The kids are out of school until January 7th! They are upstairs watching a Charlie Brown Christmas right now. Susy's off until January 2nd. I'm not done until tomorrow, but then I will hopefully be off until the 7th too. WooHoo!

Last night we stopped for Thai food on our way downtown to see Jesus Christ, Superstar at the Schnitzer Concert Hall. The Thai food was the highlight of the evening, with lots of laughing and some delicious food. We split two orders of their wonderful salad rolls and an order of the spicy eggplant with chicken. Andrew ate the salad rolls and an order of fried won tons.
JCS was okay. The kids were less than thrilled with it in general, though Mali liked the King Herod/Elvis scene, and the second to last one with the heavenly cool Judas and the dancing girls.
Paul (we didn't know they went too) summed it up this morning by saying at the start it looked like they needed two more dress rehearsals. The start was a little shaky, but Susy and my biggest problem was with the lead. Ted Neeley played Jesus in the movie - thirty-five years ago. Apparently this is his farewell-to-the-role tour. Possibly he should have bowed out after his last national tour in the 90's. Crispin Corey (thanks, Bette!) Glover, of Living Color, was great as Judas, and the rest of the cast did well. I just kept wishing that we'd gotten an understudy for the big Jesus role. Neeley only nailed it when coming across as a 70's heavy metal rocker, which isn't something we ever appreciated. The rest of the time his voice was just old and grating.
Susy and I do love the music, but there were a number of miscues with microphones and the sound quality in general was pretty spotty. I remember similar problems when we saw an uninspired tour of Cats at Iowa State in 1987. We saw Les Mis in London in the 90's and were blown away by how good it all was. I think we'll stick to the Broadway shows on Broadway or in London.

Mali goes to school! and: Fun with sleep.

Mali appeared symptom-free this morning, I think because she was heading to school with a huge bag of presents for her teachers.

I went to bed early last night, while everyone was still in the room wrapping presents. It was kind of fun drifting in and out listening to them figure out how to wrap large spherical objects - though the one time I woke with Andrew staring an inch away from my face was a little disquieting.
So of course I woke up at 2:30, sure it must be somewhere near morning. By 3:00 I was up and working. At 4:45, just as I decided it was time to go back to bed, I heard Andrew's alarm go off. So I kept working until he hit his alarm two more times, then convinced him to eat breakfast and drove him, Eric, and Rian to their 5:30 swim practice and got bagels for Mali. THEN (6:00) I went back to bed. Then I got to sleep until Susy got up, showered, and started poking at boxes: poke, poke, poke, looking for a small one for some reason. THEN I got to sleep until my daughter decided I needed to get up. At least her bright and bobbly head at 8:00 AM was a reasonable alarm.
Now it's time for caffeine, and more work.

Mali is sick.

Mali's night at Tesia's got cancelled because Rochelle is sick, and it looks like Mali is getting sick too. Susy and Andrew were both sick for about an hour. I've been sick since Friday and am finally recovering. Hopefully Mali's downturn will be brief.

Swim meet: Andrew's best so far.

Andrew had a great meet yesterday, and got his best times ever. He took third in the 100yd fly and backstroke, and his freestyle relay came in second. Here's his times:
100yd Butterfly: 1:08.6
100yd Backstroke: 1:09.4
100yd Freestyle: 58.8

It was an exciting meet, with the teams switching leads back and forth, but in the end Southridge lost by 10 points. I timed lane 3 with Rian's dad. She got several PRs too. Westview must have had 30 girls on their JV team, there were never-ending heats of 50yd free and breaststroke.

Today after school Mali goes to Tesia's with Rochelle to have their Christmas celebration. They moved it from Thursday because we're going to Jesus Christ, Superstar, Thursday night.

Bunko night

Susy was invited to Tsulan's for Bunko tonight. Andrew pleaded to go, and was thrilled when Susy called to say he could come over and play too. He won $15 AND the loofah door prize. Not sure how Tsulan's teacher friends felt about that.
Here they are cracking up after they tried to pose with their winnings, only to have Andrew accidentally shove the loofah in front of Susy's face.

Samira's birthday!

Mali and Moose walked over to Alana's yesterday afternoon, to help with her Christmas decorations. Well, Moose romped around with Max, while Mali decorated one of Alana's two trees. They were there all afternoon. Alana invited us over for dinner and birthday cake for Samira, who turned 23 on Saturday. I forgot my camera so didn't annoy anyone, though since Samira and Maiara are both beautiful enough to be models maybe they won't be annoyed by incessant picture taking.
Rocio and Matias also came over for cake. Matias brought along his Rubik's Cube, which he has just figured out how to solve. He demonstrated and explained it to all of us. Mali took pride in scrambling it up for him so he could re-solve it. Andrew thought a Rubick's Cube would be nice to find in his stocking.

We have tree.

Mali requested a tree this year. We have tried placating her in the past with several of the small, two-foot high, pre-decorated, artificial trees, but apparently that has not done the trick. We stopped getting Christmas trees after we had spider infestations three years in a row. Nothing like sitting down on the floor Christmas morning to discover those tiny black specks on the carpet are moving, and are really tiny baby spiders. Now that we have hardwood floors in the living room I thought it would be easier to monitor the spider situation. Or at least clean up afterwards.
The first words out of Mali's mouth this morning were, "Where are the Christmas lights?" We didn't decorate last night because we were across the street at a holiday party to meet the new neighbors.

Our new next-door neighbors are great. Jeff and Allison, and their kids: Andrew(4) and Holly-rhymes-with-Mali(1), the same age our kids were when we moved in. Other similarities: Holly was the happiest baby I've seen since Mali, just thrilled to be crawling her way into every cabinet and drawer she could get her hands on. She is late to walking, like Mali, whereas her brother was an early walker/runner like Andrew.
The other relatively new neighbors have a tiny kid too, but Molly stayed home with her dad.

More News: I finally got to see Maiara and meet Samira! Alana brought them over on the way to the Saturday Market downtown. Maiara is the skinniest girl I've ever seen. She looked like a model, which cannot possibly be healthy, but is very striking. Samira is her older sister - 23 and also beautiful.

Alana also rescued us by bringing over a box of appetizers for us to take over to the party. Mali really didn't want to go, because she knew she and Kelsey were going to be stuck watching the four mobile little kids, Lucy, Alex, Abby, and Andrew - only Holly was trapped in the kitchen with the adults. They did a great job, playing hide-and-seek, and of course Mali put on a show for them involving her and Kelsey in a sleeping bag moving around like a giant worm. I think she even had fun. We stayed after everyone left and talked with Dave and Gayle for awhile, finishing off the wine and eating too much of the artichoke dip that Karen brought.
We came home to find Andrew's roving party had been pared down to Rian and Tiana, Eric and Hailey had gone home. They were watching Pirates of the Caribbean 1. We crashed on the couches and watched the rest with them. They had started out at the nearby House of Good Fortune for lunch, and were all playing poker in our kitchen when we left for Dave and Gayle's house.

Home again, and the great ear-piercing event.

I drove straight from Redmond to Andrew's swim meet. They swam against two good teams. Andrew had his fastest time yet in the 200yd Butterfly and he still came in last in the fast varsity heat. The other kids were not freshmen, and they were BIG.

The big news here is that Mali got her ears pierced. Susy took Mali's friend Rachel along too for support, and they got a nice afternoon of shopping out of it. The interesting twist was that Mali fainted about three minutes after her piercing was finished! Susy got hers pierced too, and while she was up in the chair, watched Mali go from bouncing around with Rachel to laying out on the floor. She is fine, and actually quite pleased to both have earrings AND to have experienced fainting.

Maiara arrives!

I just dropped Moose off with Alana so he can play with Max all day, since I am heading up to Washington for work. Mali is excited to pick him up after school because Maiara will be there too! She arrives from Brazil at 11:00 today with her big sister. Susy and the kids have been invited over to dinner tonight to celebrate her arrival. Sadly, I will miss it. Instead I will be at my work group's holiday celebration tonight, drinking beer and playing darts.

Last night we had dinner at GoGo's to celebrate Andrew's straight A report card. Rian came along too, which made it that much more festive.

Amy and Stathis: The Reception.

We drove up to Mike and Anna's house Saturday for Amy and Stathis' wedding reception. Lots of folks were there, and their house was beautifully festive. I took a few photos. Below are the happy couple, and the gaggle of grandkids. Click here to see more.

Heading North!

We're braving the recently-flooded/just-opened I-5 highway to go North to Amy and Stathis's wedding reception. They were married last month in Hawaii.
We leave as soon as Andrew's morning swim practice ends.

Crisis: Mali has no outfit! Actually, she did find a backup outfit, but Susy stopped and bought her a new one this morning. After careful evaluation, Mali decided that, though she loves it, it's a little too slinky for today's party. Alana is on her way over with a dress she just bought for her. Here's Mali's slinky new outfit.

Straight A's for Mali!!!!!!

Since Mali was in 3rd grade our standing offer has been that as soon as she gets a straight A report card we would let her get her ears pierced. This was very convenient for us, since elementary school gives out only S's and O's and other random letters.
Today, Mali's first middle school report card came in the mail. Tension was a little high. She has taken the start of this school year very seriously, paying a lot of attention to her grades.
She took her report card up to her room to open it in private, you know, just in case. I knew we were okay when I heard a squeal, quickly followed by much dancing at the top of the stairs.

Mali chose Chinese food for her celebratory dinner, and we just returned from China Bay. She's up in her room now with Led Zeppelin cranked up on her stereo. Her friend Rachel's favorite song is The Immigrant Song, and apparently Mali has been influenced.

We've got Saving Grace from Netflix. I hadn't updated our queue lately. We're going to watch it tonight so we can quickly get back into Veronica Mars.

Subs, Yoga, and Chicken soup

Last night:
Andrew had subs at Rian's house.
Theresa took Susy to her first Yoga class.
Mali and I split a can of chicken noodle soup with added peas, onions, and carrots. She wouldn't touch the chicken, said it had been "machine-chopped, pressed, dried, cooked, frozen, thawed, and canned."
This morning Andrew's satellite-set clock is all screwed up, so his alarm didn't go off. He was ready and out the door in 6 minutes to make his bus.
Here's Mali after losing a round of hide-and-seek camera tag. (This is her winning.)

Hearts

Andrew invited Rian over for dinner, and afterwards the five of us played hearts. Rian lost and Andrew won after Mali shot the moon to end the game.

Stupid storm

Flooding has closed I-5, and Amtrak has no service from Portland to the Puget Sound. Not sure how we'll make it up for Amy's wedding reception Saturday, but we will. At worst: there is a 1-hour detour on Hwy 12 to get up to Maple Valley.
I have canceled my planned trip up to work tomorrow - I may still make it for Friday and December's poker game.

Andrew got a ride to early morning practice this morning. He felt strangely obligated to come wake us up to let us know he was leaving at 5:00 AM. I guess it is just too unusual for him to get up when I am not already awake. Last night I was up from 1:30 to 4:00, so didn't get to see him off, and was finally back to sleep when he came in.

The weather was nice here yesterday. Actual sunshine, and no wind and very little rain. Moose got to romp, so he was happy. Today is very foggy, and calm.

First day of new classes

Andrew replaces chemistry and Japanese with health and CAPS - Critical Analysis and Problem Solving. I remember he thought CAPS would be dumb, but he says it is surprisingly fun and interesting, though the teacher has a lot of rules. He brought me the list of them to sign. The rules remind me of our Freshman Engineering classes: assignments for grades must be in pen, pencil is only okay for homework - which must be done in a spiral binder and never removed, etc. It was Matias's favorite class, and Andrew has the same teacher.
The first day everyone had to give one interesting fact about themselves. Andrew's was "I put peanut butter on pancakes." Then they got to bring up any question they wanted for classroom discussion. They spent a lot of time talking about why they are here - why people exist in the universe.
Andrew says health looks like a lot of busy work. It sounds uninspired, not much different than the health class I took as a freshman in Springfield, Virginia. At least my teacher was a cool old lady paramedic.

Mali's new class is art. She says the first day is always boring, and has high hopes for the rest of the class. She asked Andrew if he signed the exacto knife pledge. She looked for his name, but only found Olivia's because hers was really big.

New Trimester -AND- Storm cancels swim meet

I drove Andrew and Eric to school early this morning after we bought bananas for the pre-meet, carb-loading breakfast. He called soon after to say tonight's meet is canceled: Forest Grove doesn't have school today because of the storm.

The new trimester starts today! Mali gets to start Art, and Andrew is done with Chemistry and Japanese for awhile. Yesterday they were out of school to give the teachers a chance to pull the trimester grades together. (Oregon is a teacher-friendly state, for the most part.)

Andrew complained about yesterday's day off not being a day off. He woke up after 11:00 and the next thing he knew we were in the car to meet Susy for allergy shots and lunch. We went for shots at noon since Andrew had swimming practice later in the afternoon (coaches don't get days off.) It took Andrew and I a long time to get to the hospital for the shots. Here's why. I exited the highway there, after driving through the edge of the massive puddle in the photo, which was still a couple of feet deep. if I'd seen the photo I would have known to just re-enter the highway, but instead we took a long detour. Getting home wasn't much better because we got stuck behind a fire truck removing a fallen tree from Greenway Ave. I dropped Andrew off at Rian's and they got to hang out a very short time before I picked them and Maddie up for swim practice. Afterwards Andrew had time for a shower and then was off to the boy's swim team party, where they watched 300 and ate pizza.

Mali was at Zoë's all morning making a gingerbread house out of graham crackers and anything else they could find. She says it came out really nice, and wants to save it until after Christmas. She had lunch there and then came home to change and go ice-skating with Rachel. She loves ice-skating, and must be getting better - she was happy she only fell twice.

Andrew got home from the party in time for us to watch Veronica Mars. I limited us to one episode so the kids could get to bed before 10:00. Andrew was very unhappy about that, but was in bed asleep before I was done saying goodnight to Mali.

Storm and Symphony

Wind has been shaking the house and tossing rain against the windows since early yesterday. Poor Moose sits by the sliding door like he wants to go out, until we open it. He's been outside twice for about two minutes each. Mali slept at the opposite end of Andrew's bed last night (their idea) to hide from any falling trees in the backyard. They moved Moose's bed in there for the night too.

We ditched the kids Saturday night for Robert and Jennifer's going-away dinner at Alana's, with all the usual suspects and also Annette's friend Jason. We ditched them again last night (their choice) for a trip downtown to hear the Oregon Symphony play Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Zoë, Hannah, and Matias all came along, along with their parents and Alana and NancyD.

Rian had some reason for going to the ceramic place down the hill and invited Mali and convinced Andrew to also come and paint stuff. Susy picked them up and dropped Mali off at Zoë's for the afternoon - they haven't done much together lately. I'm driving Mali back to Zoë's this morning, but she's only getting a ride because of the wind and rain.
Rian came over for the afternoon yesterday, and we all let Andrew convince us to play a game of Euchre. Susy and I won, of course.

Swimming Time Trials

Saturday, Southridge hosted time trials and swam along with Hillsboro, Lake Oswego, and Jesuit. Susy timed the second shift with Mike, while I took pictures and tried not to annoy everyone. It was fun watching Andrew have fun. He loves being on the swim team.
Here's a photo of Andrew standing in front of some of his teammates. Below is Rian cheering Andrew on during his freestyle relay.

Friday Movie Night for Andrew

Andrew's social studies teacher put up a list of movies in class last week. I'm not sure what the motivation for this was, the only movie Andrew remembered from the list was Remember the Titans, so I thought maybe it was supposed to be recent socially relevant movies or something. Andrew hadn't seen any of them (we're not big on social relevance here) to the amazement of his classmates. They decided to educate Andrew, and so scheduled a movie night last night.
Hailey picked him up at 5:30, and they met up with Alex at Kat's house. Andrew contributed a movie-sized package of red licorice to the festivities, and they had pizza for dinner. The movie they chose: A Walk To Remember. Andrew said that he mostly talked with his friends throughout the movie, but he seemed to have picked up the gist of it.
He called at 10:00, but was in no hurry to have me pick him up. I picked him up at 10:30, and now he's up at 6:00 here this morning so Rian can take him to time trails for swimming. Susy and I are both going for the start at 8:00.
The rest of us spent Friday hanging out. Mali and I met Susy at Marshall's to do some Christmas shopping. Moose came along and sat in the van and discovered a giant macaroon and a peanut butter cookie. (I fed him his dogfood at home before we left.) We were sure he was going to get sick, but there have been no apparent ill effects. The only difference was he seemed awfully energetic when we got home last night, and this morning there is no "I'm starving, feed me now" performance.