Ash land

Dad was saying goodbye to Jordan today and talking about the next time we will see each other, which will be a family vacation in July. "We'll meet in Oregon," Dad said. "We're going to Ashland." Jordan looked at him a little funny and said "I'd rather go to Legoland. At Legoland everything is made of legos." Eventually we realized that perhaps he was thinking of ...

Oh my goodness. I'd better show him some pictures of the real Ashland, quick. (The grownups are going for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the kids will enjoy the parks during the day.)

Lettuce my people go

We're having a great Passover. We have spent two nights out at other friends' houses; I failed to take any pictures at either of these, but if they send me some I'll update this post with evidence of how much fun we had. The other two nights so far have been home. We are keeping up our unique family tradition of doing just a little bit of the seder each night. This way things are less hectic and nobody's patience runs out. For example, Saturday night we did just the candles, wine, karpas, and matzah/maror/charoset. Ten minutes! We conducted the ceremonies in the tent, like last year, but this year the weather has been glorious so we put the tent outside.

As you can see, Dad is here visiting, which is great. Our holiday is a an entertaining change of pace for him. He's been attending the same seder for forty years, and while that seder is a treasured tradition, ours has the advantage of featuring multiple grandchildren as central participants. It makes for quite a different scene than the mostly adult seder back in San Francisco. For example, Baby Moses Salad was such a hit last year that we reprised it for 2012 and I have to say the creations are equally inspired. The lettuce leaf is the basket of reeds.

Jordan: 

Dad:

 

Dale:

 

Rachel (with artichoke blanket):

Aaron (sort of a Baby Centipede Moses):

As we rolled up our lettuce leaves and crunched away on our respective Baby Moseses, we talked about Moses. We remembered the details of his story: What does the name Moses mean? Who named him that? Did he have siblings? We discussed things we admired about Moses, and recalled some big mistakes he made. We mused on details: Did Moses have another name before he was called Moses? Why wasn't Moses's older brother put in a basket too? How old did he live to be? And what was so bad about the rock-striking incident?

Passover's contradictions

The leafy greens of spring and renewal are dipped in the salty tears of our slave ancestors. The matzah is the bread of affliction and also the symbol of freedom.  The bitterness of slavery (maror) is sweetened by the hope of freedom (charoset). And the house is cleaned like crazy, especially of any crumbs, in preparation for the most crumb-generating holiday on the calendar.

April Fool's Day

Dale was solo parenting on April Fool’s Day and had a little fun with it. For breakfast he served the kids waffles topped with chopped kale, blue milk, slimy fried banana slices, and chips to scoop up the bananas. He told them the blue milk was mixed with vitamin powder because they need more vitamins. They totally bought it, and they were miserable. Aaron actually started to cry. Here he is declaring, "I'm NOT going to eat this kale!" and hucking it off his waffle.

He cheered up promptly when Dale revealed the secret. Jordan thought it was hilarious.

It's Facebook's fault

I haven’t been blogging, and I blame Facebook. Honestly, I like Facebook a lot, and I like what I post there. But I know it’s not the same. For those of you not in that medium (?!), here’s a little of what you’ve been missing: (click to enlarge)

Even though I think my FB voice is occasionally brilliant, I have resolved to post here more regularly, especially since I have found out that more people than I realize actually read my blog, and when I don’t post, ask me if I’m okay. Eep! We’re all fine! Just busy!

Snow days

We have quite a bit of snow over here, for Seattle. It started on Saturday with a snowy-rainy-slushy mix that did not prevent us from attending a kid friend's birthday party in the afternoon. Sunday, though, there was a surprisingly heavy snowfall. That was the day of Dale's and my big joint birthday party, and we wondered if anyone would show up. People like to tease Seattleites for being winter wimps, but listen - it only snows a couple days a year here, normally. We don't get any experience driving in the snow, our cars aren't made for it, the city owns very few snowplows, and many of our streets are steep and narrow. (And exactly where does the LA Times get off calling us "clueless"?) I know my limits: I walk. Though over 50 people had RSVP'd before the snow hit, we figured we'd be changing over to an intimate dinner party with the neighbors.

Not so! Somehow 25 adults and 22 kids showed up, as many as last year. My theory is that people could not resist the Hawaiian theme in midwinter. We had rainbow leis, we had fruity drinks, we had tiki lanterns, we had piña colada cupcakes. It was a great time!

I was slightly disappointed that the kids monopolized the dance floor in the basement. It was my fault: I put on actual current popular music. I know it from hip hop class, but the under-tens responded to it more strongly than the over-40s, other than me.

That was Sunday. Monday there was yet more snow, and I had a quiet birthday working at home, which I enjoyed very much. Tuesday school opened two hours late... then closed two hours early, meaning they were basically there for lunch! It's a good thing we live so close. Wednesday more snow and everything closed. Today, a mix of freezing rain and snow, which is likely to start bringing down branches and power lines... we are just crossing our fingers that our power stays on.

The whole scene is very wintry. It's pleasant outside, actually, not super cold or windy, and wonderful for sledding. We have a grocery store in walking distance, and knock wood our house is bright and cozy, so we really have everything we need. We even have quite a good sled. However, this will be the last year that the boys fit in it together.

The other day we went down to Dahl Field, where enterprising souls had constructed a significant snow fort. 

Last night, we had neighbors over for dinner and a bottle of wine and stories and laughter, providing a much needed warm spot in the day. Today, we made strawberry snow and ate it up. (I prefer maple, myself.)

I'm sure everything will still be closed tomorrow. I miss work, but as long as the power's on, you won't hear me complaining.

Lego Hanukkah

Aaron's Hanukkah gift to us was this fantastic family portrait. Though he did not label Phil, I still recognized him.

Other than that the gift was pretty much all Legos all the time, which made our children very, very, very happy. Legos were given, Legos were gotten. Legos were built. We got Jordan some giant Clone Wars star-fighter thing sort of like an X-wing but different, very elaborate, took him a couple days' worth of building sessions to complete it.

We got Aaron the ship belonging to General Grievous, who he sometimes calls Jennifer Grievous. Aaron is actually extraordinarily good for his age at following Lego instructions, but for something of this magnitude he's glad to have his big brother help out.

Over at Kari and Danny's, where we spent December 24th, there were so many Legos that each builder had his own designated area.

And in San Francisco, where the Lego supply is more limited, Jordan made a minimalist birthday artwork for Dale.