48/52 - Thanksgiving

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year, and we had a pretty good sized crew. Since some of the folks weren't arriving until late Thursday night or Friday morning, we shifted the big meal to Friday and took the opportunity to do some advance cooking the day before. We cooked TWO turkeys on Thursday — one right after the other. That left the oven available for everything else on the day of the meal, and they still tasted great reheated for the meal on Friday. (And you can't have too much leftover turkey, right? Turkey and Sweet Potato Hash!)

Oskar napped through the entire meal, giving us an infant-free dining experience, something Corinne really appreciates!

The rest of the weekend was relaxing. Puzzles are often a part of our holiday get togethers with Corinne's family.

Anders re-discovered puzzles this weekend, too! He hadn't done any puzzles in a couple of years and had several that he had never attempted, but over the weekend he built every one of his jigsaw puzzles. He said he had thought puzzles were boring without realizing that you just go up a level in difficulty.

Happy Thanksgiving!

- Mike, Corinne, Anders Rocket and Oskar Eon

26/52 - Lost Tooth, July 4th

Anders lost his third tooth this week, and it was a big one: right maxillary central incisor, aka top front tooth. This one was a long time coming. He first mentioned to us that it was loose about four months ago, back at the beginning of March. He was eating dinner on Tuesday when he noticed something funny in his mouth; by the time he had connected the dots, he had already swallowed it. He was pretty disappointed, but not disappointed enough to take us up on our offer to look for it when it... came out.

Once we explained that the tooth fairy doesn't actually need the physical tooth in order to make her appearance, he calmed down and wrote her a note.

Dear Tooth Fairy: I have swallowed my tooth eating noodles.

She didn't disappoint.

There's something about a kid missing front teeth that is timeless. I think he could convince anyone to do just about anything with this face.

And if the first face doesn't work, here's his "fierce" look.

Anders hasn't been too curious about the tooth fairy; in fact, he hasn't really even noticed the sparkles that she leaves on his face when she visits. But this time, Anders decided that "We should go to the non-fiction section of the library and check out a book about the tooth fairy." Good idea. I wonder if they have one?

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Anders has always enjoyed books. But now that he can read many of them on his own, he has taken it to a new level. He is participating in the library's summer reading program, keeping a log of all his time reading. On one night in particular, we had a hard time convincing him to come to the dinner table.

But Mom, I don't want to waste time eating dinner. I want to finish reading my book!

His kindergarten teacher would be so proud.

Aboard the library bookmobile.

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Summer has arrived early this year, and unfortunately so has the fire season. Mount Adams has its first wildfire of the season: the Horseshoe Fire. It was probably started by a thunderstorm in late June, but that hasn't been confirmed. It is still relatively small at only about 250 acres. But the 100° heat and remote location of the fire means that it may be a while before they can declare it contained.

Here's a time-lapse video of the smoke blowing over our house on the first day. Thankfully, high over our house.

Watch this video on YouTube or
in the original post

Whenever we hear a helicopter, we run outside to watch them fly over with their water buckets suspended beneath.

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Another quote from Anders, while eating outside at the Hood River Tacqueria this past week:

This is the most peaceful restaurant I've ever been in. No loud talking. No music. No TV.

Yep, he's our kid.

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Anders learned the word 'prosthetic' from a certain They Might Be Giants song, but of course he had many questions.

Anders: Is there such thing as a prosthetic forehead?
Corinne: I don't think so.
A: Is there such thing as a prosthetic toe?
C: Probably not.
A: How about a nose?
C: Maybe?
A: How about a prosthetic penis?
C: Yes.
A: What?!? Seriously?? There is really such thing as a prosthetic penis?
C: Yes.
A: Do you know anyone with a prosthetic penis?
C: No.
A: That's crazy.

We'd love to be there when he tries to explain this to one of his friends. I hope we don't get in trouble from other parents!

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Happy 4th of July! We spent the day enjoying two local parades, catching up with neighbors at a block party (for large values of 'block'), then capped it off with a fireworks display over the Columbia River.

Anders and BoBunny

Happy Birthday, America!

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

10/52 - Toronto Potatoes, Chimney Caps, Christmas Tree?

We asked Anders to make a list of the items he needed from the grocery store for a particular school project. Little did we know that we were going to get something more like a work of art.

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It's really fun to hear Anders play with new words and try to use them in sentences. Of course, his first few attempts may not be quite right.

Example #1:

Yum. This pork is really brittle.

We think he meant tender.

Example #2:

These Toronto Potatoes are too spicy.

That may be the first time in recorded history that phrase has been spoken. (They were actually chorizo potatoes, but who's keeping track?)

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Sometime earlier this year, the metal cap on our chimney blew off on a particularly windy night. It appeared to be a homemade cap, so it was a little difficult to tell what size we would need in a replacement. We needed to see what the top of the flue looked like. Neither of us really wanted to climb up our old 25' wooden ladder to look ourselves. But we're engineers, so we engineered a solution.

A camera with programmable timer, a 30' pole, and some duct tape...

...and voila!

We ordered the cap in the correct size and hired someone to install it for us. Because as we said, we're too chicken to climb our 25' wooden ladder. Done.

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We've discovered that we like to keep our Christmas tree up for quite a bit longer than the average family. Last year our tree came down around Valentine's Day, but this year we beat that by about 2 weeks! When March rolled around and we were preparing to travel to Arizona, we decided the time had finally come.

Goodbye, tree! You served us well.

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

Happy 2015!

Our New Year's celebration this year had no fancy parties, no balls dropping, no crowds, just some quiet time at home. We had so much fun with our activities last New Year's Eve that we just had to do it again.

First, party hats! Construction paper, glitter, scissors, glue sticks, tape and ribbon. I think our hat-making skills have improved since last year.

Once the hats were made, it was time to make pretzels! Or as Anders says, "prentzels". I forget how easy it is to make soft pretzels; we really should do it more often. Corinne can put as much salt on her pretzels as she likes, and I get an excuse to eat mustard.

Time to get the drinks ready! Italian sodas in champagne flutes with sugared rims.

Before we knew it, it was time for the countdown to midnight.^† 3... 2... 1...

Happy 2015 to everyone!

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

^†Per tradition, we surreptitiously set our clocks ahead by one hour, celebrating the transition to the New Year one hour early. Anders got to stay up until midnight, and everyone got an extra hour of sleep. Hooray!

16/52 - Easter and Jokes

We always have a good time decorating and dying eggs for Easter. For the past few years, we have eschewed the standard egg dying kits in favor of more creative options. For colors, we just use straight-up food coloring with some vinegar. In previous years, we tried other even more "natural" options (turmeric, beets, etc.) but ultimately couldn't get the vibrant colors of ordinary food coloring.

But our eggs aren't just dyed, oh no. Crayons and stickers - applied or removed at the right time - play prominently in our egg decorating schemes.

This year, Anders added his own little twist: the day before we dyed eggs, he made an Easter egg map showing the different colors and patterns that he wanted to make. (Can you tell he's the son of two Type-A personalities?)

Periodically during the dying, Anders would consult his map to find the next egg pattern. In the end, he did a remarkable job (with a little help) achieving his plan.

We spent the better part of an afternoon on our 4 dozen eggs.

Volcano, Heart, and Warning

Spots, More Spots, a Rocket and Rocket's Current Age

Venn diagram, an egg about to hatch, pom-pom

Seeq

The Easter Bunny would have lots of beautiful colors to hide.

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On Easter morning, we ventured outside to see what we could find.

Anders brought his metal robot bucket along to collect eggs, though thankfully he has learned that he should place the eggs into the bucket rather than drop them.

Some of the eggs led a trail into the woods, ending in a small clearing.

A basket? In the woods? How did this get here?

Happy Easter!

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One of the items Anders received for Easter was a copy of Bennett Cerf's Book of Riddles, first published in 1960. I can only imagine that the jokes were old even when the book was published. It includes such classics as:

Q: Why did the little boy throw the clock out the window?
A: Because he wanted to see time fly.

Q: What dog keeps the best time?
A: A watch dog.

Anders loves jokes, and this book feeds right into it. He has memorized all of the jokes in the book and loves telling them to anyone who will listen.

Watch this video on YouTube or
in the original post.

Before he got this book, Anders hadn't heard any of these jokes; to him, they are all new, and all hilarious. He re-tells them many times, and each time we are supposed to play along. When we don't (eventually everyone gets tired), he will explicitly tell us to "pretend that you don't know the answer."

My father and grandfather are renowned for their penchant for telling bad jokes. As Corinne said recently, "Anders must get his sense of humor from the Daly side."

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders

7/52 - Christmas Tree for Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! Anders wanted to put a boat on his homemade Valentine's cards this year, and it's always a fun challenge to come up with a design. Here is one of this year's results:

Of course, each card is unique and hand-crafted. Anders did the majority of the cutting, drawing and gluing for his cards, though it was broken up into shorter sessions over the span of about two weeks.

By the end of the task, he grew tired of all of the cutting and gluing, so he switched media for some of the latter ones. Here's one that was inspired by his model truck videos: it's a toy boat being lowered into a bathtub by Anders's giant hand.

It is pretty interesting to see the variety, creativity, and different themes of the cards that he received from his friends.

As for Corinne and I, we had the evening to ourselves with Anders at Grandma's house. We watched a movie, ate popcorn, and were in bed by 10:00pm. In other words, a perfect evening.

Valentine's Day is the traditional end of the Christmas season in our household, so it was time to take down the Christmas tree. Yes, that's right, our Christmas tree was still standing and fully decorated! The tree takes so much effort to put up and adds so much warmth to our space that we want to enjoy it for as long as we can.

With the late arrival of snow this year, keeping our tree up this long allowed us to pretend that we had a white Christmas.

One last look... hey, snow!

Our tree stays fresh for quite a long time, but it did stop taking up water several weeks ago. As a result, the branches aren't nearly as pliable as they were when we brought it in. Removing the tree requires disassembling more than just the lights and ornaments.

As expected, heavy rains melted the majority of the snow fairly quickly. The rains also triggered quite a few rock slides in the area and closed several major roads. I-84, which is the main interstate from Portland through the Gorge, was CLOSED for 5 days! With all traffic redirected to the much smaller road on the other side of the river - which was also closed for a while due to slides - there were long lines of cars and snarled traffic throughout the Hood River/White Salmon area. Days like this make us appreciate our short commute even more; there is rarely any traffic in the 10 feet between our bed and our desks. Unless you count LEGO vehicles, of course.

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders