Swimming in Flowers

For one week a year, the gang all gets together, puts on our grubby clothes to work on floats. This year we proceeded to glue, seed, petal, pick, blow, mum, cut, tweeze, sneeze, and freeze our way through decorating on six different floats.

Kevin and Thomas tried their hand at detailing, and decided they didn't have as much patience as was needed for the job at hand. It gets just a little bit tedious at times, cutting straw flowers and gluing seed on to little tiny spaces. Even with the assembly-line process we had going, it was hard with a couple hundred of these detailed designs...

...that eventually ended up on sides of these giant purses. They wanted to be on scaffolding - with all the other teenagers.

Alanna and Sam worked on putting all manner of seeds and flowers on the floats.

Two of the projects I worked on during the week. I now can add dogs and bees to the animal repetoire of butterflies and fish.

Cindy taking a break with a long-time decorator.

Tracy, Donna, Melissa and Robbie decorated as well. Many long days and nights later, after inhaling glue and diesel fumes, listening to float soundtracks again and again, answering questions from passers-by, singing to stay awake, bowls of chili and adding layers of clothes to keep warm, the floats were pulled out of the barn to be driven to Pasadena. If we're lucky, we won't sleep through the parade.

Christmas Happenings..

Alanna and Curtis came over Christmas Eve to make cookies for Santa. These involve crushed candy canes...and making the cookies is as much fun as eating them. (You must be sure to ask Curtis sometime about how good those cookies taste.)

I have four handsome boys.... but I guess asking them to pose at 7:00am Christmas morn brings out the most handsome closed-eyes / goofy grin sides of them. Hurry up, mom, take the picture so we can start! (HEY! At least you're not being blinded by a 6,000 watt light bar attached to the movie camera!!)

Four pages of questions relating to Michelangelo, the Strait of Magellen, and Boy Scout merit badges greeted the boys searching for their big Santa present. Well, Matt did write a note to Santa to "PLZ make the scavinger hnt harder this year."

A much easier white elephant gift exchange happened in the afternoon at Cindy and Gary's, followed by everyone feasting on brisket, marcies potatos, and liquid fortitude. Since it was pouring down freezing rain, we stayed inside for the day.

December Happenings

We started out the month with Matt in the Christmas play at school.. Since each kid performed in this same pageant in both 2nd and 3rd grades, and they haven't made any significant changes to the program in oh, the last 10 years or so, I figure we've seen this shin-dig going on eight times.


Kevin's troop had a Court of Honor the same week, celebrating the fact that Kevin got his Tenderfoot rank about 9 months ago. (Not a particularly timely group, are we?)

Matt's cub scout den needed to see a model of a construction site. What better place than the site of a $1.2b construction site? After checking out the new upgrades coming to DCA in the next five years, we played in the parks with a boatload of other merry-makers.

Kevin had his Christmas concert at his school last night. Wait, I mean "holiday" concert...it is politically incorrect to call it anything but that.

I wanted to get a good pic with my kid, he just wanted to make a silly face. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

How Much is That Doggy in the Window?

Replacement screen door to the backyard, including bent grill, new curtains, curtain rod, new plastic, and crew to clean up dog drool: $100

Doctor bill with booster tetanus shot for the cat bite (yes, bite) received while keeping said doggy from freaked out cat: $50

The look on the kids (and dog's) faces when they finally get to play with a real live, honest-to-goodness dog: PRICELESS

(There is no Dana, only Zuel...)

Took Sammy back to LAX on Sunday. Half-way there, I realized "oh crap, it's the busiest travel day of the year!!" and I hadn't left any earlier than any other time. We pulled into the "Arrivals" level, bypassing all the schmucks waiting to get into the airport on the upper level - and immediately parked in the front row. Sw-eet!

This nice lady from Southwest took our picture. All I could think of was that grandma always liked a man in uniform. (Wonder if he ever felt a hand patting his knee???). He has three weeks of school, and finals before returning home on the 19th.

Matt had to make a batch of cookies for Cub Scouts, so we pulled out all the cookie cutters we could find and he had a good time rolling out the dough and making all different kinds of shapes.