The Thanksgiving Hike

One of our favorite holiday traditions is a family hike. It's our twist on what I grew up doing--going for a neighborhood walk after the family meal together. This year we went to Double Rock Park, where the girls always love throwing rocks in the stream and Alan and I find our sanity revived along with our awareness of what life is all about--knowing, thanking, and glorifying the Creator of this beautiful world.

Giving More Thanks

Thanksgiving has got to be one of my favorite holidays. It's just getting together, eating a meal, and hanging out, and I just love it. Mom and Dad hosted a wonderful meal, and we all reveled in the memory-making. Here are a few more pictures to add to the earlier post. (Aunt Barbara still loves putting black olives on her fingertips...and eating them off!)

Catching Up

Whew. Life kind of picked up speed in December, and my cyber space photo album suffered. I'm going to put up a bunch of posts that summarize some recent highlights, starting with my cousin, Charles' visit before Thanksgiving. He's my Uncle Chuck's son and lives outside L.A., but we were happy to have his company for a few fun-filled days. Here he is relaxing w/the girls and striking a pose outside our walking-distance pub where he & I enjoyed an evening of conversation (and a nice visit by Sung Ko & another friend!)

Celebrating those five year olds!

It took so many tries to get the videos loaded into this post--but now they're in and ready to share! The weekend before Thanksgiving we met Grandma & Grandpa Blackman at Matt & Becky's house to have a belated party for Casey and Evelyn. I wish I had more pictures--we always have such a good time when we visit together. Casey's into space these days, so the glow-in-the-dark solar system we got him was hung in his room before we left. He's five and he can name all the planets! Evelyn loved her princess and ballerina gifts, and all of us enjoyed the fellowship (including playing "Rock Band" together. Nobody plays video games like Becky--it was SO much fun!And yes, that is Grandpa playing guitar in teh one video! You didn't think Alan's talent was a fluke, did you?) We are looking forward to Christmas together!
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I Found Thanksgiving!

Actually, Alan found the pictures...funny how even w/all this computer technology I can still "lose" a file of pictures. So here are just a few from our celebration with Mom, Dad, Jon, Courtney, Anna, Aidan, Aunt Barbara, Uncle Diego, Lindsy, Kelby, Shelley, Cousin Ryan, and Esther. More to come...and pictures from our birthday celebration the week before Thanksgiving with Casey and the Blackmans (sounds like the name of a band!)

Always giving thanks for everything. (Eph. 5:20)

The Nut House

We've already arrived at stir crazy--not a good sign! Must be the new schedule that doesn't allow for as much outdoor time (really, really miss that!)

This morning, amidst a cacophony of noise and perpetual mess, Alan and I were trying to have a simple conversation about laundry. Our voices were slightly raised over the hubbub, and Alan said, "Just put it in the hamster..."

We lost it. Our brains are officially mush.

We are now going to go get our Christmas tree in a wet, slithery snowfall. Wish us luck.

Fun with Aidan

I don't know what my fascination is with videos of these kids dancing--perhaps I'm just a little envious of their complete lack of self-consciousness. And the giant tree slide at the zoo is always a place to stop and enjoy the glory of repetition. It was also a place where other zoo-goers marveled that I had 3 children so close in age. When I confessed that one was my nephew, one woman actually remarked, "Well that's a relief. You are way too calm for these to all be yours."

Turning 40 = Excellent Adventure

Jon & John turned 40 this fall & to celebrate, backpacked the Grand Canyon with their wives. Isn't that cool??

While they were away, I was able to spend an extra day with their kids--taking Aidan to the zoo with the girls, then taking both Aidan and Anna to AWANA with us that evening. It was a special presentation night and the kids had a blast in the front row--below they are checking out a snapping turtle.

Congrats, Jon, Courtney, John, & Jolene, on your hike!

"What's that terrible smell, Mommy?"

Evelyn asked this as we got into the car this morning to take her to school. It seems that between the hours of 8 pm last night and 8 am this morning, someone sat in our car and smoked a cigarette. I guess worse things can happen when one leaves one's car unlocked in Baltimore on a cold night.

UPDATE: After talking with Alan about this, it seems more likely that some people slept in the cars last night to escape the cold who just smelled of smoke. To which we say....you're welcome to use our cars to stay warm whenever we forget to lock our doors. :)

Hamiltopia

Life is at warp speed and I am falling behind at the absolute worst time of year. So I'm just going to post a picture of a recent Hamiltopia as a reminder of the gathering that inspired the name of the blog, and of a pot of the most colorful soup. It was a vegetable curry that included purple cauliflower I discovered at the Farmer's Market. It's just like regular cauliflower but has all the anti-oxidants of other purple and blue foods. How cool! Of course I've put it in everything since then, including the salad I made for Thanksgiving.

More pictures are to come...there have been some wonderful family times lately. Just tonight the girls and I met Mom & Dad and Courtney & the cousins at the mall to have pictures taken with the grandparents. It was the most successful attempt yet--some great pictures and great fun (if the dozen trips up and down the three floors of escalators were any indication. The best part was that the four kids did it wearing bright, striped pajamas in which they'd just been photographed. We were quite the sight!)

Is there a current lack...

...of legitimate things about which to throw a fit? Amelia accompanied me to my school last Thursday, where I was administered the H1N1 vaccine. She observed with interest, held my hand to keep me brave, and then, when it was over & we started to leave, she began to cry loudly when she realized that SHE wasn't going to get one.

It felt just a little strange comforting my child with the words, "It's ok, sweetie. We don't always get everything we want. Maybe the next time you're at the doctor YOU'LL get a shot, too."

Children

I had the most wonderful skype conversation with Jen--it was Saturday afternoon here and Sunday morning there and I could hear the birds singing in New Zealand while she sipped her coffee. During our conversation she asked me about a book I'd had when she & I were roommates. I'd bought it visiting Jon when he lived in Chicago & he'd taken me to the Wheaton College Library (that's where I got hipped to Dorothy Sayers, too.) Anyway, I still have the book and pulled it out and have been enjoying it thoroughly before I send it along to Jen when our friend Laura heads to NZ for Christmas.

It is called "Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC" by Frederick Buechner and was first published in 1972. It is a lexicon, and under the letter C, he says this about Children:

When the disciples, overearnest as ever, asked Jesus who was the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven, Jesus pulled a child out of the crowd and said the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven were people like this (Mt.18:1-4)...He was saying that the people who get into heaven are people who, like children, don't worry about it too much....who live with their hands open more than with their fists clenched...who are so relatively unburdened by preconceptions that if somebody says there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they are perfectly willing to go take a look for themselves.

Children aren't necessarily better than other people. Like the child in "The Emperor's New Clothes," they are just apt to be better at telling the difference between a put-up job and the real thing.

Now that I have little children, this rings so true. I have a renewed desire to be more LIKE my girls, while praying for the wisdom to raise them to be adults who have childlike faith.

And at the very moment when I was wondering if I had a sweet picture of my girls to attach to this post, Evelyn got up from her nap, came downstairs and announced to me, "Mommy, I just peed in your bed." Well, if that isn't just a quick shake back into the tangible realities of life! :)

When Amelia grows up...

...will she be a photographer? She certainly loves taking pictures (love the self-portrait of her sweater? Or of perpetually nude "Baby Amy?") Maybe she'll be a teacher. The latest dollhouse trend is playing "school"--lining up all the dolls on chairs and singing some sort of hello or weather song.

But as much as she LOVES singing, I doubt she'll choose that as a career, since it is unbelievably hard to get her to do it for an audience. That's why I had to post this clip of her in our neighborhood CVS's card aisle. It's rare footage.

Fall Fun

For once I'll let the videos speak entirely for themselves. :)

If you want quiet...

...you'll have to stand still in the woods at this time of year. My friend, Denise, and I met last week w/our girls at Oregon Ridge for a stroll through the forest. While I'd never trade it for playing indoors, I'd forgotten how LOUD the leaves are at this time of year, not to mention how LOUD the people walking on them have to talk if they want to be heard by each other.

The girls would have spent hours playing, as they were continuously inspired by various things we passed along the way, but they were also excited to get to the playground at the end of the hike. I was just happy to be outside, living in this moment of motherhood with a friend who is doing the same thing.

Denise's daughter, Emma, took the pictures of the trees and of Evelyn, which I thought were quite good.

Holly Happoween

Halloween was quite a joint effort this year. Thanks to Diana, my mom, & Alan, I was able to help w/the Run for the Ranch (raising flood relief funds), take Evelyn to a classmate's b-day party, & get them suited up in their spontaneous costume choices (we are not the plan-ahead types--their preferences change w/the hour--& it makes me uber-grateful for the stash of yard-sale outfits my mom has scored over the years.)

Then, it was trick-or-treating on Tim & Diana's street, with a warm hearth & house full of friends (oh yes, and some good fun!) Amelia got tired & punchy and started saying "Holly Happoween" when folks opened their doors. So cute! Alan & I didn't dress up, but Diana still had our Merry Carolers costumes in her basement & I could pull off Mother Goose w/my glasses. Very fun.

Isn't this a welcoming fireplace? There's a lot of nostalgia in that picture...lots of fellowship has happened in that room.

It's all in a name...

The girls are attending the pre-school and pre-kindergarten classes at a small Lutheran school this year. Amelia, who often requests to be called by different names, told my mom recently that her name was "Anna Lutheran."

I relayed this to their school principal today, who laughed and immediately replied, "And did Evelyn ask to be Anna Baptist?"

Just thought all you church historians would get a kick out of that one.

Deep Creek 2009--alas, abbreviated

The girls & I headed out Saturday morning, had a grand welcome and enjoyed the great food, hiking, games, and fellowship that is Deep Creek (someday our list will include the famous fishing, too, but not just yet.) Check out Jon--pretty good for a 40 year old guy, eh? Good thing he came along to throw the rocks off the trail for us.

The videos capture the roaring river on our Swallow Falls hike--we'd never seen it like this before. The video of Amelia makes me shudder wondering if I actually kept a hand on her while she did that silly dance on that slippery rock.

And leave it to my mom to find something in her travel case that would make more bubbles than I've ever seen except in the movies!! The tub's jets helped, of course, and the kids had a BLAST.

I wish I had more pictures of everyone! One of my favorite memories is cousin Caleb's dramatization of "The Three Bears" in a game of telephone charades, which HE interpreted as a woman eating three bowls of spicy food and then having to empty herself into three latrines. Thank you, Darcy, for introducing that game, and Aunt Joan for revealing that the reason Deep Creek is so much fun is mostly thanks to the in-laws. This was discovered when we tried to make the teams Bissets by Birth vs. Bissets by Marriage, but it would have been 3 against 10 because no other "Birth Bissets" besides Jon, Caleb, and me wanted to play. Good thing we all married such fun people.

The girls and I even went to the traditional Sunday buffet and you should have seen Evelyn's face when I told her she could take a plate and pick whatever she wanted. She picked mashed potatoes and a blueberry cobbler. Then I made her eat a salad. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for stopping with us on the way home to go on that hike at that overlook! While we were doing all that Alan was searching the countryside for a place that would drain oil out of the Corrolla (I'd been overzealous in filling it on the way out) and managed to get it done for FREE. Love it.

And he COOKS, too!

I came home from work Monday and Evelyn ran up saying, "Daddy made TORTILLAS!" I walked into the kitchen and he was sauteing a bunch of vegetables to go with the filet strips he'd already cooked for our fajita dinner. Crazy thing was, I doubted for a second that he'd made homemade tortillas because the kitchen was so CLEAN. But out of respect for all the scrubbing I'd done on Friday, he'd already done away with his mess. What a guy! The dinner was fabulous.

And speaking of the clean house, walking back into that clutter-free, sparkling place upon returning from Deep Creek, it honestly looked like one of us had moved out. We have our countertops back! :) Not that it will stay that way, but it's nice to have those moments, and nice to have a husband that helps with it and cooks such great dinners!

Deep Creek pictures to come...

Holy Pickerel!

Jon sent these from Deep Creek, where the Bissets are enjoying the traditional weekend in the woods. As I understand it Alan has caught the biggest fish thus far--woohoo--and my nephew Aidan is the CUTEST fisherman.

I'm home w/the girls who are emerging from some cold or flu, and before you feel sorry for me I have LOVED this day. We played dollhouse forever (inspired by 2 bags of hand-me-down dollhouse toys from Diana, Liv, and Maddie), and I have CLEANED this house almost from top to bottom. My wrist is sore from scrubbing floors and I wore an actual hole in one knee of my pants. The place smells like vinegar and Murphy's oil soap. It is wonderful. Tomorrow if the girls are still fever-free we'll head out to Deep Creek. If they've got fevers again, Alan will drive, too, and meet us in the middle. Then he'll drive home w/the girls and I'll finish out the weekend playing games, eating fresh fish, and playing kazoos with a really great group of people.

Books on Tape

We don't have a CD player in either car, so we joyfully receive lots of hand-me-down tapes. The current favorite is the Johanna Spyri classic, "Heidi," read very pleasantly by a London actress. Once Evelyn was walking around in a filmy lingerie top from her dress-up bin and I told her she had to put on something warmer. She balked and I insisted and then the screaming ensued, "But I want to be a FIGGER!! A white FIGGER!!!"

"You want to be a what?" I ask, much confused.

"A FIGGER!!! Like in Heidi when there is a white FIGGER on the stairs," referring to the scene where Heidi sleepwalks in her nightgown & Clara's household thinks it is a ghost. On our tape, the narrator says it in her perfect British accent: "And there appeared a white FIGURE on the stairs."

Then there's listening to the "Annie" soundtrack. We've discussed the appropriate & inappropriate times to talk about butts and bottoms and and various bodily functions. It never fails that when Annie sings "The sun'll come out, tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar..." both girls yell, in their best nanny-nanny-boo-boo tones, "She said BOTTOM! Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww! Annie said BOTTOM!!" Thus begin the lessons on multiple definitions and context.

Hear ye, hear ye!

Princess Evelyn turned 5 on October 16th with her first-ever friend party. Five little princesses (+ Maddie!) decorated paper bags, did a few activities culled from my music lessons (bad weather scrapped the outdoor plans), decorated cupcakes, sang, ate cupcakes, then played "ghost" w/ Maddie, who floated stealthily around upstairs wearing a blanket off our bed. I'm pretty sure Evelyn had a blast.

My parents were in attendance, as were the Walshes (sans Alex), Esther, one of the girl's grandmothers, and Mark & Denise, whom Mom and I met while going to birthing classes at St. Joe's Hospital FIVE years ago. (Those classes w/Mom are a great memory!) Their daughter, Emma, was one of the princesses. Liv even helped clean up, crawling under the table picking up cupcake debris before it became permanently embedded in the rug.

While I've joked that I'm not the "30 kids and a moonbounce" kind of party parent, it was really, really fun planning this for Evelyn. She chose the princess theme and the cupcake decorating, made the invitation list and wrote her thank you notes. It really is true that we just long to give our children gifts. And now WE the parents have this gift--a five year old that is, as one of Alan's musician friends said, "a vibrant creature!"

Hamiltopia Delivers!

Recently the girls had colds and a note came home from their school about a student in Amelia's class having the swine flu. While I'm not a worrier, I still didn't want to be the parent spreading it irresponsibly if my kids DID have it, so we opted to remain home on a Hamiltopia night.

The Smiths were hosting, and when I called Jess to say we were bowing out, she insisted that Andy would still bring us dinner. (See why I love these people?) And then, when he came to the door dressed like THIS, I just fell over laughing. I made him stand out there (and it was rather warm that day) while I ran for the camera. (Note the "quirky" references in the "About Me" section.)

We did NOT have the swine flu, but we did get a lot of laughs (and dinner delivered) thanks to our Hamiltopia friends. If you click on their link, you'll see a picture of the Singapore Crab Soup I lapped up that night.

Woods, Water, and Harvest Festival

Last Saturday the girls & I hiked at Oregon Ridge. It was warm enough to wade in the little lake, & I wish we'd had more time. They could spend hours playing in the water, with the bugs, and making art out of fungi and leaves.

There was a festival, too, and we watched wool being spun into yarn and we--of course--had to stop and exhibit our amazing blue grass dance moves. The band had a big sign that said, "Absolutely NO children on stage." They must have known we were coming. Check out the picture of the band. I didn't realize until later that Evelyn's head had flown into the picture, too.