The Naked Bears in Winter

The girls are often quite busy preparing various performances. Just yesterday Ella and I were treated to a command performance of "The Naked Bears in Winter": Yes, it was performed in the darkness, with headlamps. For the fearless: And if one were to shine a bright light on it, here: A great success.

Update from the Duniway, where Ella types in this message:

"Ida told me that Axxxxx [a girl in her class; name changed by PR as per journalistic ethics] wrote I her journal that she had spoken to God. Ida did not think this was true. She asked if I had spoken to God and I said I had not. I also said that some people did believe they had and I could not say if they were truthful of not. She told me that she had spoken to God once and "she had a baby" and the baby's name was Samantha. Ida could not recall what God looked like and then said she was making it up." 

President's Day vs. the Zoo

Both Portland Public Schools and Tumbleweeds respect Presidents' Day (after all, these gentlemen are on COINS), unlike Reed College or Kaiser Permanente, but I found a little time to head up to the zoo with the girls.

This wasn't a super original idea, but we beat the crowds by getting there at 9 when the zoo opened at 10. Man. So we had an epic adventure by taking

The elevator deep underground and then catching the exciting Train downtown! We had a nice ride out of the tunnel and into downtown (though Ida troubled the notion of whether we were actually going "down" and how there could be a town inside a city) where we got some hot chocolate and chocolate croissants.

Then we were back to the zoo.  We each got to pick one animal, since we were in a bit of a rush.  And mostly what Ida wanted to do--alas, this generation!--was to document things with her camera.  You can see their silhouettes there, Ida holding the camera:

This is the picture she took:

And from here on out, only Ida's photos.  This is the baby elephant, Lily.  Very popular.

A polar bear, lounging.

Ida chose a zebra as the animal we wanted to see.  And that was a real trek and pursuit.  There was only one zebra available, and he was a little stand-offish, but we got up above him so Ida could squeeze off this shot:

Naked mole rats!  Pretty exciting.  That dude to the right was chewing on some kind of carrot or something.

Can you see the tiger?

Yes, documenting the world (and wild animals in false environments created by humans) rather than simply experiencing it.  What will happen next?  A good day, regardless.

Living holiday to holiday

Never has Valentine's Day been so eagerly awaited. Ida reports that she "has a crush" on Valentine's. We've been having a countdown to Valentine's Day for the last three weeks. Not that we ignore other holidays: Also, Ida has decided that she'd like an elf for her birthday--cutting out the toy middleman--and she'd also like to own the tooth fairy.

Ella, eavesdropping on Ida and Elsie

Elsie: Let's see how old we will be in five years.
(arranging pegs)...Eleven!

Ida: Mom, is five plus six eleven?

me: Yes

Ida: so if we could jump in time we would be eleven.

Elsie: let's see how old we would be if we had Miki and Theo's age.
three... Fourteen!
now let's see if we had Theo's age. four... Nineteen!

Ida: Stop talking about this; I wanna be five.

Portfolio

So far 2013 has been a really pretty decent year. Plenty to do.

Miki? She's kickin it. She has soccer class. Thinks she's cool.

Been hanging at the OMSI...

...checking out science and stuff.

Alert blogsters might note that there are no pictures of Ida, here. Why is that? Because she's BEHIND the lens; with her new camera, she is documenting everything in sight (and I'm sparing you hundreds of pictures of "Bear-Bear," Miki sitting next to various Lego/Lengo creations, out-of-focus pictures of our garage, etc).

Ida has plenty to say, too. She made me leave the Arctic OMSI movie because "it was breaking her heart" and was "heartbreaking" due to global warming and the polar bears having no ice. "I know all about this, and I just can't stand it," she said. What can she stand? Boxcar children. There they all are.

She gets a lot of good lines from them: "I wasn't eavesdropping! I just overheard."