Christmas

Andrew and Mali took the train to Tacoma from Portland and I scooped them up for a night at Grandma and Grandpa's. The morning of Christmas Eve I handed out some presents:
They asked for new Vans (shoes), which they got. Also included:
Magnetic Bucky Balls (and a little magnetic dude - not shown)


and new gloves, fingered AND fingerless.

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.

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.