How do you say thank you to friends who let you drop your children off at their homes at 7:30 am because you have an 8 am meeting? Hopefully with bags of orange cranberry scones. ‘Cause that’s all I got this morning. Well, that and my winsome smile.
Having an Epiphany
Happy New Year, everybody! Here are some of our resolutions.
Honey:
1. Learn how to ice skate
2. Have $100 in my bank account by the end of the year
Hot Wheels:
1. Play lego
2. There was no 2 – he really didn’t get the concept
Tom:
1. There was no 1 – he couldn’t commit
Me
1. Spanish (just because it’s been on the list for years doesn’t mean it can’t happen, you know)
2. Lose my fear of turning in ballet class (or just gain the ability to turn)
3. Process transient data (ok I threw that one in just for Dad)
4. Make more art
I actually have an ongoing resolutions list in my head with about five hundred and thirty seven things on it, but I’ve learned with resolutions you really must narrow it down to just a couple finalists to completely ignore throughout the year.
In all my years of making resolutions, I’ve probably only followed through on about three of them, but those few successes give me an unrealistic optimism every single January. Resolutions are fabulous: as barometers of our interests and priorities, as plumb lines of our belief in our ability to change. Or maybe it’s just that I love making lists. Either way, they sure help me get over the end of the holidays and see the new year with fresh eyes.
Teacher Gifts
In our schools, the parents all contribute to one main gift for the teachers at holiday time, but I love to have a little something to go with the notes the kids write to the teachers, aides and librarians. This year my friend Barb and I made chocolate bark with assorted toppings. We melted blocks of semi-sweet chocolate in bowls over boiling water, then poured the chocolate out onto cookie sheets lined with foil. While the chocolate was warm, we scattered the top with dried fruits and chopped nuts.
Our favorite combinations turned out to be dark chocolate sprinkled with hazelnuts and drizzled with stripes of white chocolate, and white chocolate topped with cranberries and pistachios. These looked particularly festive and tasted great. We also made a peppermint bark that was delicious, but we liked that the other two were just a little more unusual.
Barb put hers on these beautiful little cocktail plates to hand out, and I put mine into brown waxed paper bags. At home, I made some gingersnaps and put them into small brown bags as well.
Then I took brown paper lunch bags and drew on them with white markers so that they looked a bit like gingerbread houses. One of each of the small treat bags went into each of the larger paper bags. Tie it with a bow and call it happy holidays.
Snowflakes
We don’t get a lot of the real kind of snowflakes here in Mill Valley, so we make them out of paper. This year we started using a new technique to build out our snowflake portfolio! It’s a slightly less geometric, more illustrative style.
Rainy Day
This is the morning I woke up to a cold, rainy, grey day and thought – I’ll just have to wear my cheery socks that Mum gave me.
This is also the day that I forgot my ballet slippers when I went to class.
I’ll leave the rest of that scenario to your imaginations… well, I’ll throw in that my teacher did say she was pretty sure my socks were ‘illegal for ballet.’
Moving on to slightly more competent news, we’re having Christmas dinner with our friends across the street, and this year I thought it would be fun to make Christmas crackers. I ordered the tubes and the snaps from Olde English Crackers, which was a pleasure because they shipped everything ridiculously fast.
Inside each cracker are 5 essential components: snap, hat, joke, treat, toy. I had to order up the snaps, but the hats were a cinch to make with tissue paper.
The beauty of cutting your own hats is that you can make them all just a little bit different.
Next up is the joke – these are meant to be real groaners. I found a whole bunch online and they include gems like, “An Englishman, and Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, ‘What is this, a joke?'” and “What happened to the guy who fell into the upholstery factory? He’s fully recovered.” The blessing is that the crackers happen before the meal, so no one gets queasy.
Then comes the treat – I opted for fun-sized candies since I think the wrapped hard candies don’t get eaten. The kids were excited about that.
Last up is the toy, and this year I got tiny gifts for each person that I thought she or he would like. They’re surprises, though, so no pictures.
Here they are, halfway finished. I’ll try to remember to get a shot of them once they’re done.
Thanks
Some shots from our Thanksgiving holiday with Lino and Claudia, down in Venice Beach. We were on the highway at 4:30am on Thanksgiving morning. It’s actually a great way to go – the kids sleep for a couple of hours of the trip and there’s hardly any traffic. It took us a bit less than 6 hours, while a friend who did the drive on Wednesday night told me it took her 10 hours. Yikes.
We brought pie, rolls, Tom’s wild rice dish, pumpkin bread, a present for the baby (to be) and some baby pumpkin tea lights.
Lino and Claudia’s home is modern, beautiful and welcoming. They had some lovely friends over for dinner and we all had such a terrific night.
Here’s their gorgeous table:
Lino made the most fantastic chocolate cake for dessert. (He also made a puff pastry with asparagus inside and mushroom sauce that I could eat Every Day.)
I had to throw in this photo of Honey sitting on their front step.
The dress she wore for the holiday is a dress of mine. It’s vintage, dahling, don’t you know. I’m trying not to take that too hard. Somehow it’s not as insulting as when the American Girl Company unveiled their latest historical doll – from the seventies. I was like, gag me with a spoon!
We had such an amazing visit. Here are the kids playing in the ocean, Thanksgiving weekend. Now that’s just not right. But it’s wonderful.
And how’s that for a mountain of sand? This photo was taken mere moments before Hot Wheels did a compete face plant in the sand. I’ve never seen anyone so insulted.
I’ll leave you with this shot of our gorgeous hosts, high above Santa Monica pier, in the Ferris Wheel. Does it get better than this? I think not.
And We’re Back
Wow it’s been a while. When I logged in tonight, WordPress was all, “Wait – who is this? Oh, it’s you. I didn’t know you were still in town.” So I said, “Yeah, well you’re the one who wouldn’t let me upload any images. You’re lucky I came back.” Snap!
Seriously, though – it’s been an eventful couple of weeks.
First, as many of you know already, Honey had a bit of an unpleasant surprise the Friday before last. She’d been complaining of a sore jaw for a couple of days – thought she’d clonked it in her sleep. It didn’t get better so we called her dentist, who saw her despite the fact that her office was closed that day. Amazing. And fortunate, because as it turned out she had two raging infections, and we were hustled off to an oral surgeon who took one look at the x-rays and said he’d take care of her right then, despite the fact that his office was crazy that day. They took out a couple of teeth and a real bully of a cyst. Thank you for good medicine and great healthcare providers.
It wasn’t pleasant, to say the least, but it’s over. For about 4 days Honey looked like she played for the Bruins, and then she started to feel like herself again. She was flooded with kindness, though. Phone calls from her family around the world. Movies from our neighbors. One friend called to see if she was ok, since she didn’t go to school that day, and about 20 minutes after we hung up, another friend from her class appeared on our doorstep with 2 pints of Haagen Dazs. In the early evening, our neighbor Michael called to see how she was doing, and when I asked Tom how Michael knew what had happened, he replied, “Oh, Mary told him.” Mary is one of our favorite cashiers at Safeway.
I was reminded of two important truths: we are truly surrounded and buoyed by our community, and we’d better not do anything unseemly, because it will be all over town in a heartbeat.
On to a nicer, tastier surprise. One night as I was trying to figure out a new soup to vary up the soft-food diet, I experimented with a potato soup that ended up tasting great!
I wish I’d written it down straight away – it was so simple I was positive I’d remember. Duh.
But, it went something like this:
Saute a little garlic, half an onion and a chopped up leek in some olive oil until soft. Add 4 good sized potatoes, peeled and cubed. Add a carton (4 cups) of vegetable broth) and a can of small white beans. Cook until everything is soft. Puree it in the blender. Add a dash of pepper. Some of us had bacon (smoked, not crispy, finely chopped) and some of us had toasted pumpkin seeds on top. (I happened to have both.)
Here’s what I’m telling you. It was AWESOME. Maybe we were all just super hungry, but everyone loved this soup. Even Hot Wheels, and he’s not a major soup lover.
Saturday
Saturday morning we finally checked out the recently re-opened Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. We’d heard it was absolutely amazing. What we hadn’t heard was that they actually built it in Teletubby land.
Ok seriously – this living roof is absolutely phenomenal. Approximately 1.7 million plants over a 2.5 acre roof provide wildlife habitats and insulation for the building. On their website, they claim that the academy is the greenest museum in the world, and there’s an impressive outline of all the “Green Building Features” in the newsroom section.
Let’s just have a moment on the architecture, if we can. I say ‘if’ because the architecture is so mind boggling to me that (to pull out an old saw) I’m not sure I have enough time to make this brief.
The new museum was designed by Renzo Piano, and there’s a great review in the New York Times that’s worth checking out, and it includes a slide show which gives some beautiful shots where you can actually see the building. The day we went the museum was breathtakingly crowded, which made me slow to take in the shape of the place in all the noise and distraction and fear of losing one of the kids. I really thought we had a good chance of losing one of them. There were people everywhere.
There’s a lot to say about the museum, so I’ll just focus on one of the aspects I admired most. It seemed that different elements in the architecture were interacting with each other in a lifelike way. For example – the overall impression of the building as I entered was long, strong and rectangular. Inside this huge long box are two spheres, 90 feet tall, that are buildings within the building. One is the planetarium and the other houses a rain forest. When you go up to the roof, you can see the forms of these spheres pushing up into the roof, like they’re rising or lifting the blanket of plants overhead. There are some areas with a distinctly classical feel to them, but the pristine white rows of columns and arches are interrupted by the occasional tree bursting out between them. The floor in places seems carved away by a river, and stingrays glide underfoot.
These are just a few examples, but whole effect of the building is that it’s bursting and teeming with life. The museum doesn’t just contain and display science; it is science. It’s a breathing, growing, perspiring, saving, thinking building. The architecture and the exhibit design demonstrate it by pushing and pulling into each other, and I find myself asking questions, which I believe is what it is all about.
Have a look at the rain forest sphere:
You can see the people inside looking out.
Here are some shots from the aquarium:
The kids had a terrific time looking around at everyth-WATCH OUT, HONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yikes!
The past three days have been sunny, 75 degrees, warm and lovely. Here are two De Young museum shots – one from the roof of the Academy of Sciences and one from the tower of the De Young. Check out the crystal clear day.
It was a remarkable, fascinating visit. I’ll leave you with one more shot of the De Young, on our way out.
Friday
Hot Wheels took in birthday treats for his preschool classmates on Friday. Check out the awesome cars Mum and Dad sent to him in his birthday package. He thought they were so cool he was dying to put them on the cupcakes. They’re such fabulous candies – stylish vintage form, beautiful matte colors, great packaging. We’re sold.
After school, the kids’ best friends came back to our house to play for the afternoon, and then we all had dinner at their house that evening.
These guys have known each other all their lives. We met their parents in Lamaze class before the girls were born. The girls are 10 days apart and the boys, by an amazing and fortunate coincidence, are 6 days apart. They’re really good set.
I have to admit this picture of the girls together just brings a lump to my throat.
Happy Birthday, Hot Wheels!
Is it possible that this dude is 5? (Let me amend that… this is him when he was a baby. He turned 5 today.)
He’s having an awesome birthday so far, filled with lego and vehicles and books and, you guessed it – a hot wheels ramp. He’d been hoping for one for such a long time. So today is a thoroughly good day.
On Tuesday, school was out for the holiday, and we went for a beautiful bike ride up at Samuel P. Taylor park with Joan and the girls.
We had a great ride, complete with picnic lunch and sketching down by the river.
Honey took the shot of the hay. She was going bonkers over the horses on the hill.
It was a great day for food, too! See this nice pumpkin?
Look at all those beautiful seeds. Let’s say you had all those gorgeous seeds, plus the seeds from two other carving pumpkins and a squash. What would you do with such bounty? You’d toast them nicely in the oven, wouldn’t you? Until they were perfectly crunchy and salty and oh-so-good. Well I meant to do that, last week, but instead of toasting them to perfection, I burned the life out of them. After all that goopy scooping and picking and washing, we sat down to dinner right in the same room with all those seeds and I completely forgot them. Doh!
All wasn’t lost, though, because then I just cooked that sweet pumpkin with some butter and brown sugar until it was mushy. Then on Tuesday morning I used it to make Pumpkin Bread.
I followed this recipe from Epicurious, which was easy and so, so yummy. We had it that night with white bean soup. The ideal cozy end to a fall day.