Speaking of Sympatico

It's delightful when the same sparkle bird-wearing friends loan you a fluffy pink marabou to wear for the evening.

Friends Who Understand You

I saw these feathered, glittered peacock Christmas tree ornaments in December and immediately thought, "I want to wear these on my head!"

Over the weekend, we had our annual Epiphany dinner with our good friends, for the 16th year in a row, and the ladies there said exactly the same thing. So we did. Ah, it's so nice to be with friends who share the same craziness.

Jump

Non Chemically PJs

It's been a real bear trying to find non-chemical treated pajamas for the boys. These days, almost all children's pajamas are have flame retardant properties. I agree that I don't want anyone to catch on fire, but what are the long term side effects of wearing those chemicals next to growing children's skin for 11-12 hours a day?

The alternative is very tight fitting sleepwear, where presumably there's no material to fall into an open flame (like we have any candles or bunsen burners around.) It's getting harder and harder to find them, but luckily, I found a nice set decorated with Cars2, so Q-ster and Buster could have new PJs for Christmas Eve.

They were not kidding about the tight fitting part. It almost took three of us to get Buster's hands through the sleeves.

MicroSherpa

The boys got me this super-soft blanket for Christmas, to keep me/us warm when we watch videos together. If you click on the picture, you can get a close-up of the label. It's a reversible "microsherpa to micromink" blanket. I'm just imagining little tiny minks running around, waiting for their haircuts to contribute to the micromink side of the blanket.

A New Meaning to the Back of the Bus

When I was getting off the plane yesterday, the flight attendants announced that there were two exits, one in the front and one in the rear, so it would got faster to leave by the nearest exit. That's a frequent occurrence for commuter flights in California, so I didn't think anything of it, when I headed out the back.

What I didn't realize was that when you leave from the front, you get to go through the enclosed ramp that takes you straight from the door of the plane into the airport. When you leave from the back, you walk down a slippery metal staircase, crunch across the snowy tarmac, and then climb a flight of stairs to get into the airport!

I was glad I'd worn by warm coat instead of packing it into my suitcase.

Photo: The Palace at sunset yesterday (4pm.)

P.S. The weather report has a low of 4 degrees tomorrow. I’m a little panicky!

Toto, We're Not in California Anymore

Tomorrow:
Sunrise at 8:51am
Sunset at 4:07pm
High of 23 degrees F

In San Francisco, street vendors make a killing selling sweatshirts to tourists who think that all of California is warm and therefore wear short sleeves into the city, not knowing that it's chilly there almost all year around. Well, I've found the equivalent today when I landed in this Scandinavian capital.

Hats.

Before I left, SwingDaddy asked me if I wanted a hat, and I said no, since I have a hood attached to my Polarthin jacket. Indeed, the hood is much warmer, but it's hard to see anything while wearing it, and it was nice to be able to look around at the breathtaking, snow-covered city this afternoon in the one half hour of sunlight I'll get outside this week.

Thus, a new hat. I figure it’s a kind of tourist tax, but cuter.

Snuggle-puss

Mommy, can we snuggle with our octopuses on the soft carpet?

Yes, baby, yes we can.

Racism is Stupid

Love this.

I can't confirm the original source (9gag.com, perhaps?), but will update to with credits if otherwise!

Telling Time

We haven't worked on telling time on analog clocks in a while, but I'm guessing that the little dude could use some practice. Maybe not on this Lego watch that he built for himself though.

MiLKshakes

The little dude was able to convince us there was a correlation between milkshakes and Martin Luther King Jr Day.

Brooms for Everyone!

I finished sewing a Quidditch broom for Buster and he immediately went in search of his Harry Potter glasses.

Next he retrieved his Jedi robe (so multi-purpose!) and was ready to ride.

SYTYCD Fans, Check This Out!

It's Neil Haskell, finalist from season 3! He was one of the leads in Bring it On - the Musical.

Thanks to SHN/Broadway in San Francisco for the tickets last month. We had a great time.

Monster Lemon

January is orange season for us - we (or to be more accurate, mostly SwingDaddy) pick hundreds of sweet little Clementines from the tree in our front yard. Today however, Q-ster selected this giant lemon from the tree in our back yard.

Pretty impressive! (That's SwingDaddy's hand, for scale.)

George and the Bank

A couple months ago, my sister posted a link to this awesome overseas commercial (check it out!) where a rumpled woman wakes up in bed, clothes astray, clearly after one heck of a party, and notices that she's in a really luxurious room . . . wearing an enormous diamond ring and sees a wedding gown on the floor. Then George Clooney walks into the room in pajamas. The shock on her face is priceless.

It turns out that it's an ad for a bank (in fact, for a bank in the country I'm visiting all the time these days, which makes it all the more delightful), and Clooney did a local interview about shooting the ad, praising the actress with whom he worked. Cool thing - apparently, he and some other celebrities pay for a satellite to be focused on the conflict in Darfur, to reveal troop movements and such. This costs him about a million dollars a year, so he looks for a fun project like this to cover the funding.

And here's an interview of the actress in the commercial, who was pretty thrilled to have the part.

Hug Hug Squish Squish

Buster loves my big squishable octopus so much that we got him a miniature one for Christmas. He's been carrying it around for days, and it is one of his "sleeping friends," tucked in bed next to blankie at night.

I took a few pictures of them together and he giggled endlessly as he looked at himself squashing the octopus. Hug hug, squish squish.

Hug

Hug

Squish

Squish

Harry!

Q-ster struck the pose that he’s seen from the movie stills – Harry in the snowy courtyard with Hedwig on his arm.

Happy New Year and all that!