January concerts

It's nice to have a kid in the front row now.  So much easier to get a pic.  We have lots of pics at several concerts of the top of Michael's head in the rear rows.  Above, Adrienne and the Cheetah house kids are dazzled by the applause at the end.

It worked out that the kids played in different concerts last night, so we were there from 6:15 to 9 p.m.  It was nice, but we've had our fill of middle school band performances for a few months at least.

Happy MMXIII

A rocky start to 2013, what with the payroll tax hike and Kim & Kanye baby news.  It can only get better, right?  Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas 2012

a present for next year

Set to release exactly one year from today:

Anchorman 2 releases Dec. 20, 2013 with the reported bonus of Kristen Wiig involvement.  Of course, that's if Dec. 20, 2013 isn't the one year anniversary of the last full day the world existed.




Now if they'd only make another Anne of Green Gables movie next year...

return of the weather geek

We got about 10" of snow this weekend.  Other parts of the metro got around a foot.  The kids and neighbor kids all descended on the snow pile in the cul-de-sac after the plow went through.

I think all four kids have used the circa 1975 snowsuit that Zach's wearing.  He's getting too tall for it now...sniff.  So if the weather talking heads know their stuff, this is the most snow in a one-time event that we've had in almost 2 years.  During last year's wimpy winter season, our biggest total was around 4 inches.

Also spent time this weekend trying to get a family photo for the Christmas card.  Though we set the camera to take seven pics at a time and took almost 100 photos total, we still had precious few to choose from.  I do admit to having the lofty goals of everyone looking at the camera and having at least a non-menacing facial expression.  Here's one we didn't use:

Zach and Nicky were the biggest offenders.  And the dang cat wandered into this one.  Yeah, "Merry Christmas from all of us and Felix's rear end".  Zach looked like this for a whole series of 7 shots:

And poor Michael came pretty close to breaking my Non-Menacing Look rule.  He bared all his teeth in every photo.  One could imagine him growling or howling at the moon afterward.

Suzuki method

Nicky started violin lessons this past summer and he's doing pretty well.  At yesterday's lesson, he had to pick a card to determine which "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" rhythm he'd play for a warm up, and then pick a card to alter the rhythm somehow.  One of the alteration cards he picked was "Who What Where Why When" or something like that.  Nicky wasn't sure what that was about, and neither was I.  His teacher said she'd ask him questions while he played.  He said, "What... like 'who invented Microsoft?'  Like Bill Gates?"  Ha!  What a goof.  She just asked him things like "what month is Christmas in?," and so on.  No Jeopardy! stuff.  When he figured out he was just supposed to play through the distraction of her cross examination, he did okay.

'Prolly will get our Christmas tree this weekend.  If we win half a billion dollars tonight, maybe we'll spring for one of them spendy $80 trees at the tree farm.  On the other hand, maybe craziness like that is the slippery slope to bankruptcy.

Men's wear milestone

Michael and his 8th grade band compadres looked way too old at their concert last week.  And while out shopping recently, we realized Michael can fit into men's size small.  My 'lil baby, all grown up and wearing men's clothes.  And he's more and more particular about what he'll wear, of course.  He also complains about his 6th grade sister yelling "Hi Michael!" in the hallways at school every time they cross paths.  Awkwaaard.  6th graders are lame-o, and heaven forbid you're related to one of those peons.

Anyhoo, Thanksgiving's around the corner.  Have a good one!  I'm thankful for all sorts of poetic and sublime things, like Cold Stone Creamery's cake batter ice cream and Cinnamon Fire Jolly Ranchers.  And turkeys just taste fantastic.  And pumpkin pie.  Ahhh.

All Hallow's Eve 2012

We're getting a lot of mileage out of the werewolf mask.  That'd be Mikey in there, of course.  Adrienne is a vampire girl or whatever.  Nicky - 'arrrr, matey!  And Zach the proctologist.  Ha.

We had a groovy time trick or treating with some neighbor friends for an hour and a half.  That wasn't long enough for M and A though, so they went back out with dad for 45 minutes to rake in more loot.

An American Werewolf in Lakeville

And speaking of Lakeville, Nate pointed out that it made number 19 on Money Magazine's 2012 list of top 100 best small cities to live in in the U.S.  One of 5 MN cities to make the top 25, so I guess somebody here knew who to pay off (just joking, Money Mag spies).

Had a little more fun with masks last night, just like last year around this time.  It wasn't as fun as last year though...in particular, when we went outside to take pics of me riding a scooter with the werewolf mask.  See, we were surprised to see a skunk lumbering around the cul-de-sac, so Nate threw rocks in it's general direction to scare it away.  Too funny.  "Be gone you skunk, we have big important things to do like take pictures of ourselves scootering around in a werewolf mask for pete's sake."

No skunks were harmed in the making of this photo

We're just doing our part to put Lakeville in the top 100 weird cities to live in.  We'd be in the top 100 skunk-filled cities, if somebody made a list of that, too. Three times in the last couple months, we had to shut the windows when some virulent skunky odor started pouring in at night.  Not to mention all the skunky roadkill around here.  Ewww.

Zachisms

Zach had us chuckling during supper last week.  When he was told to eat something besides grapes, he scooped up a forkful of meat and said "I'm going to regret this!" and then "Oh, I'm gonna panic!"  Nicky took the 'blame' for Z's expanded vocabulary.

Red Wing was cool and misty on Saturday and the kids grumbled as we moseyed our way through the street vendors, but just like every year, Godfather's cinnamon streusel* pizza was flippin' marvelous.  When we got home Michael disappeared for about ten minutes and then reappeared with a K'nex* tower he'd just assembled. 

Not sure where his sudden architectural enthusiasm came from, but he was proud enough to smile with minimal prompting.

*suggested corrections are cinnamon 'stressful' pizza and 'Kleenex' tower