Independence

Got a call from a neighbor this morning. "Do you know," he said, "that your girls are out walking in the neighborhood?"

"Yes, I know that," I said. "Did they cross any streets?"

"I just saw them disappear down Lexington Street," he said.

"Okay," I said, to make him feel better, "I'll go out and intercept them."

Ida vs. Kricket vs. springboard

Much to update you on, internets.  But for now here's a little film of Ida working with her gymnastics coach, Kricket.  Weekends here go swim lessons, soccer class, gymnastics.

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."

Stumbling into the New Year

Today while eating cake, Ida said, "Do you think if you die while you're having a dream, you get to keep the dream?"

Yesterday we went sledding, which was quite excellent indeed. Ida even plowed straight into a jump and launched herself headfirst into some snow, getting a bloody nose and mouth that painted the slope for the rest of the day. But she's okay.  She also ate a bunch of snow, despite many warnings from Ella.

We were way up in Washington. Crazily warm and sweet day.  The snow was misleadingly deep, however, and some of us were often getting a leg stuck and then losing boots underground, etc.  Miki did not think it was cool that I took her picture before I pulled her out.

Well, who turned 41 today? Hotter than a darn furnace! Just came skiing right over!

She's ready to celebrate...on Tuesday. But meanwhile, here's a couple photos of her with her older sister that I don't really understand and wished to share.

Actually, this was an incidence of a "pinched nerve" that we heard a lot about and then kind of faded out of the conversation.

2013! New Year's Day

Ah, the year turned, so we headed out to Sauvie Island to see what 2013 will look like. It appears that it will be beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful, no one had really forgotten about Maggie's red superhero tights, but seeing them on New Year's Day was a very propitious sign indeed.

Snow!  We quickly began to work on a sandy snowman.  Arthur made a lot of strange noises in his throat while crawling around.

2013 appears to be a year where it might be difficult to determine truth.  Miki's been blaming the "night wind" for blowing various toys of Ida's to hidden spots in the basement; yesterday in the moving van I listened to Elsie explain to Ida, at some length, that her new stuffed bear often talks to her ("just telling me what he's been doing") when no one else is around.  "Do you think you imagine that, or you're playing?" I said.  "No, Peter," she said.  "He really talks."  Anyway--

Elsie, Theo and I have found that crying copiously is a surefire way to get Arthur's attention.

And if Arthur puts one person on his shoulders the rest of us will cry until we get the same treatment!

On the way back to the cars, we spied something strange up in this tree.  What do you think?

Using my new camera, I ZOOMED right in:

Yes, Bald Eagles! Ida has been a little distraught at the many American flags we saw on the east coast during the Christmas season, but let's just claim the holiday season as American, why don't we? At least New Year's, after this Sign.

The actual Christmas

Oh, it was sweet.

Miki said, "Santa Claus must have thought we were better than we were."

Stay tuned for New year's...

Christmas Eve!

Grand as our travels (documented below) were, it was so fine to get here, home, to PDX. And right away it was Xmas eve! And all the girls got new dresses (some trading had to be undertaken to avoid Tantrums):

A ferocious dance party ensued--the vinyl of M. Jackson's "Thriller" was spinning!--and I got some video footage of Ella really shaking her rump but she disallowed me posting that.  I'm using it for my private use.

Out of the eight nights we've been back, we've eaten at the Bradford's seven times.  I like it.

Now, this couple!  This sequence of photos speaks for itself!

Christmas Eve salmon!

The girls did not like to have the lights on.

And then we came home and got things all ready for Santa.

(btw Ella has declared herself really not into the whole Santa thing; stay tuned)