Animals in the Snow

Here's another photo that Ida took. It documents Miki wearing underwear, for one thing. She's getting good at it--especially at Tumbleweeds. The other day Ella caught a poop in her hand.


Meanwhile, it snowed! Ida says, "you can't eat yellow snow--it's dirty--or snow that someone's walked on."


Miki was a little perplexed by the snow and wanted to get into the moving van. So she sat there for a while until we picked up


the Bradford girlz! Yeah!


To think that not so long ago the same pick up looked like this:


Anyways, that's the kind of action we're seeing around here. All's well. Stay cool, and see ya.

Theft from Tumbleweeds!

Okay, far as I know the security was not breached. Except I did get all these photos from there. And let me tell you, it's been about a month since all four girls were simultaneously able to attend school. Lots of fevers, vomit, diarrhea. Lots of lost work days. And I won't even go into what's going on with Vidamae. Meanwhile, girls!



Check out how sad Theo looks! It's because Arthur and Elsie went to NYC without her.


Elsie, the oldest student at Tumbleweeds, often hits other students with this rake if they disobey her!


Here's Elsie and Ida waylaying the chickens (thanks, TIH, for having urban chickens so we don't have to!); Aaron lets them go in with the chickens, but Melinda isn't into it.


Ida likes to wade in deep water and get her snowmobile boots impossibly wet so they weigh one hundred pounds.


Are any of the other Tumbleweeders in that treacherous puddle?


I don't even know what was happening here, except probably Ida was telling these trucks what to do next. Telling them to be very useful trucks or something while sternly pointing at them with her finger.


Actually, Theo is kind of sad,

but only for moments.

All Hearts

I really recommend the delightful video made by the cousins, but here today we had these two girls.


The one on the left says "I'm Nelson!" The one on the right says, "Happy Balentimes!" I think she believes Balemtimes are the delicious brownies made for us by the extremely limber Maggie. Anyway, Jordy Nelson, apart from being a Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packer, likes to run wildly around our house, very quickly, and has two daughters named Matthew and Hannah:


Yesterday we got to the zoo an hour early and it was very cold, but fortunately there was a train to investigate. And Miki was all dressed up, too.


The tights and diaper look can make Miki look like she's wearing a codpiece, but the sunglasses keep it all cool.

The Cold Bright Days

Okay, so this morning Miki wore underpants to school; I put a diaper underneath her in her car seat, but she arrived at TIH still dry. I've been told by impatient followers that it was time for a new post, but I wanted to update you on that. Speaking of TIH, I'll steal a couple photos. Here's from back when it was kind of snowy:



Miki often thinks she's very cool while she's at school.


This morning it was cold and frosty again, and I had a very difficult time convincing the four girls to walk from the moving van to the door of the school. I mean, they actively left the van, but then wouldn't go inside because they wanted to lick everything with ice on it and to proclaim where they saw frost. "On this leaf over here, too!" "Look! On this plant!" "What? On the stairs?"

In the very RIE environment, the sisters often interact quite openly.


Our good friend Sung-Ji doesn't often have to deal with such excitement, as she lives in Florida, but she can make a very fine hat for those in colder climes. This, which may have been a birthday present for Ella, is ably modeled by Ida here:

And here:

Miki vs. Underpants

Weekend Hijynx

So, anyways, I've occasionally been accused of making up the phrase "Very Vining"; oh, no! A testament to Rut himself:

Recently I decided to do some work on my vintage 1983 Schwinn Le Tour, the bike that once had Leopardettes swooning; the bike came to PDX back in 2007, when it was revamped and entered Phase II. This is Phase III, with an emphasis on errand-running and ease of riding for guests beyond seventy years or age.

I asked Ida to take a photo of me with the bike, so I could show my Dad, and this is that:


She then commenced to very seriously set up a photo of all her bikes--dragging them to the front yard, arranging and rearranging them, putting leaves and sticks on them--and requested that I stand at the end (not in the front, and not on the other side) holding the pen that she saw in my pocket. Voila:


This may well be my new author photo.

a conversation

Pete: "Do you think maybe Cinderella's real name is 'Ella' and they call her Cinderella because she sits at the edge of the fireplace like that?"

Ida: "Come on, Dad. Her real name is Cinderella."

Punishments of the Sun

Anyways, 2011 is finding its own weird rhythm, round here. The sun came out, and we went to Sauvie Island, like old times!


Arthur was even in town. Miki got to ride him.


For a time, there, all the girls had to be carried. This here is Elsie on my back. It's like carrying a human being, or being a siamese twin where your twin doesn't have legs or something.

Ida got hold of the camera and documented some well-known chests:

She somehow got Theo's whole head, here:

Aww.

Here's what it looked like with action and sound, kind of the experience, with wolves.

Once we got home, Miki and Ida went all Abu Ghraib.

I don't really know what to say about this.

39

39!

ERV! The reason we're all here. No one is more amazing. Her girls rousted her out of bed this AM and forced her to make some cupcakes. But this picture is from the other day when she was rockin these tights. (You should have seen her donkey kicks, earlier in the evening, in these beauties!)


Meanwhile, these girls were rockin these matching dresses--thanks, Grace. It was for a party we went to where an adult woman fell down the stairs! She was all right.


Miki's into it all.

500

Ah, what could be more involved and self-congratulatory? But here we are on our 500th blog post; why not take this opportunity for a kind of arbitrary journey through time and space? A retrospective. Here's where and when it all began: April 17, 2007; Ida, barely out of Ella's body, breathing air.

By the next day, Cousin Elsie was on the scene!

This is Ida's first Christmas. Grambee was PUMPED.


These girls were so fortunate to have Chandler looking after them. Us, too.

Christmas #2. No one wilder than G-Toko.

Before long, Ida was living it up at Tumbleweeds ...

And noticing something new about Ella's stomach. There was something in there. Ida liked to talk to the baby, right through the skin!

Before we knew it, Miki was upon us!

Ferociously.

Somewhere before then, here in PDX, Theo showed up. You can tell that she and Miki are already getting along really well. (This is part of a very fine sequence in which Theo drinks cheap beer from a can.)

Remember when Miki couldn't even walk? All that knee-walking! This is just last summer; now she never walks. She runs.

Or struts.

Occasionally we even saw the outside cousins, like the energetic D. Hawk.

And Uncle Arthur was often on the scene. Rumor has it he's been giving plenty of mustache rides, but he has not been wearing this shirt very often. Perhaps such advertisement is unnecessary.

Before long we were kind of like a family, trying to have holiday cards and everything.

Is 500 enough? The action is nonstop, for certain.

This is some breast-pumping, yesterday morning. Miki gets milk out of her belly button! It's a miracle.

See ya.