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