Renn Fayre, alas

Hello! Been busy here! Renn Fayre started up and the girls hit the Thesis Parade ("What are children doing here?" asked one half-naked, drunk, body-painted student, while falling down.)!

That's my friend Sara with the girls in the hammock. We could have hung around and watch ARthur make out with a bunch of students, but we had to rush back to Martins St

(wait, here's a late addition...a student just sent this to me...no explanation of what was going on, but a good depiction of how far Ida and Elsie were ranging, trying to sell flowers they picked to tripping seniors.)

to see Chandler! Hurray! She's getting married to her secret boyfriend! Secret's out!

Then Ida got a fierce fever that she still possesses! Right now she's home, and will be, and Arthur's coming home to help out. Hard to get babysitters on short notice, these days.  We did get a little Trader Joe's shopping done, though.  That's "Cowy" and "Pony," who are dirty, fabric-freshener-smelling stuffed animals that the girls got from a man with stuffed animals attached all over him at the Thesis Parade.  We agreed that they would return to Renn Fayre, but then Ida got that fever and we never returned...

Miki?  She's feeling good.

And we'll be all right.  Ida made this new friend, Johnjo, who's coming over to hang out a little later.

He fears no fever!

Hot Days in PDX!

Okay, the big news here is that Arthur got back from Egypt! Whoa! And he brought everyone back these dresses covered in little pieces of metal like coins so when the girls are running around it sounds like Vidamae is back on the scene! You can't really tell, here, but Elsie is striking her "walk like an Egyptian" pose.

Meanwhile, it got to be like eighty-five degrees, here. Miki likes to wear her snow pants when it's pretty warm; man, she got really hot and sticky today. Promises much for the summer. Here she is, boiling over at her betrothed Talu's 3rd ("troisieme") birthday party:

Ida is working a lot on her gymnastics and tumbling these days. Also her reading, but she doesn't want to watch the video of her cousin Leigh reading until she herself can read.

(That's Talu)

Ida: 5

She's our girl! Five!

This is from her messy art party, or after it;

I think there were pictures on the camera from the party itself but afterward while we were at the playground the thieves shattered the mini-van window and stole my backpack, including that camera and many other crucial items!

In any case, Ida got to sit on Kaito,

and later while I was trying to put my identity back together, Maggie made Ida and Miki some hot dogs. Ketchup!

Miki is very proud, and tells everyone, "Ida is already five years old; I'm not three, but I'm in goldfish swimming class." This, in a return to documenting Ida's photo-taking (with phones; that's all we have now, alack), is what Miki looks like, less than a month away from three:

And here is the last existent photo of Ichi. Ida sneaked down there to the basement bathroom, where he'd been exiled, and checked in on him. He got down to 15 pounds, in his last days! We had a devil of a time keeping Ida from taking him out of the box the vet put him in, and that was very sad, but Ichi and the box were taken to the Humane Society for cremation.

And there were many animals, many potential replacements, there. Ida was particularly excited about this rabbit, how it could sit down with its ears up like that.

Lately she's really been talking about rats. A white rat, in particular.

Ichiban ("Wahri") Vining 1996 (?) - 2012 RIP

Yes, old friend, it's true.

Ida's sobbing in her bed, crying "Ichi loved me every day of my life, ever since I was born..."

He was a good friend and quite fierce for so long.

We'll miss him a lot, and remember the good times.

His early days as a street cat in Philly, his drive across the country in the Festiva, his many battles with lesser felines in Sellwood, and his glorious and toothsome later years, where he welcomed Ida and Miki to this world and taught them how to protect themselves.

So, yes, we're living a life. A few.

For instance, we took "Clara the Ladybug" down to the memorial where the boy drowned in Johnson Creek. The girls really like this, and are full of questions; whether or not it's a good learning experience, I don't know. Ella's into it.

Here's a learning experience, though! Ida and Miki and Theo in their hippie (as opposed to Elsie's New York, not allowed to wear bangs and required to spurn everyone after Nutcracker performance) ballet class. How did it look?

Here's Miki's joke today at dinner, made up by herself: "A boy peed in the toilet, and then stuck his head in the toilet, and then flushed." More to the point, did someone turn 42?

"Buying a card for any age over 35 makes a mother misty-eyed," says G-Toko. "Looks like some heavy drinking," DKV says.

I'm not sayin.

What up?

These guys are really pretty busy, these days. Making things, doing things, explaining how everything works.

This is Ida's dog, who is named "Calm."

Ida is hounding dogs throughout our neighborhood. A man let Ida walk his dog on a leash, the other day, and now every stuffed animal in our house now has a leash attached to it.

Sometimes Miki gets to play with Calm, just a little. She and Ida think we should get a chihuahua. Or at lesat some chickens and then a hamster, after Ichi dies.

The other day they came racing in from school, shouting, "Ichi! Is he alive? Is he dead? Ichi, you're still alive! Look, he's moving and everything! He's hungry. You're not dead!"

Holladay Festival

Oh we haven't forgotten--we can never forget. For one thing, Miki wants to have her birthday party at her cousins' house. And Ida refuses to wear any clothes that she didn't get from her cousins. We're talking about the Holladay Rocks, of course. That's my brother Jim's family, he of the "noisy boisy" hideout fame (fill you in on that later, Jim). Phoebe, Bonnie, Margo, Matthew. And Grace is their mom! And always has a strategy to keep the childrens occupied; sometimes these strategies involve tricking them into doing cantaloupe work.

Some people think this is their actual house, but it is just a play house. You can go in there and collect bugs, if you're Ida.

It was so nice in Utah. People decided to have a picnic

on the SportCourt:

Another thing they like to do is blast dance music on their outside speakers and Rock out across the lawn. It is quite a spectacle: Thanks, family!

SLC, continued

Many people have wondered where I grew up; I mean, what it looked like, where the Genius was borned. Well, that would be 2016 Laird Dr, soon on the list of the Utah Historical Society. NOt just for my goal scoring prowess, though, and not for the Xeriscaping, but

Because a "Museum" has been erected downstairs (I hope it hasn't been taken apart in our absence)!

This tour guide didn't want to be in the picture:

This museum is actually in my (and my brother Jim's) old room.  The unique "copper between boards" design was the brainchild of Jim, who made the ill decision to sit down on a bed.

That's an attractive face he's making.  Speaking of attractive, we convinced Grambee to join us on an excursion toward Brigham City.  Here she's telling Ida a story about Patches and Misty, the cats, and then one about Chloe and Smokey, and then about one thousand others that Ida demanded.

Miki was consistently hungry.

So we stopped at the Peach City Drive-In, where we had some shakes and listened to "Unchain My Heart" on our table-side jukebox.

Where were we headed?  To a hot springs, of course!  And not just any hot springs, but Crystal Hot Springs, where the mineral content is the HIGHEST IN THE WORLD.  It may have healed Grambee of all of her afflictions!

We had kind of a difficult time keeping Ida out of the cold pool.  And then she made this short video for you:

Next, Part III: celebrating with the Rock cousins in Holladay!

Miki vs. ear operation/procedure

Yes, we have more to show about that SLC visit, but I know many of you are concerned about Miki vs. the ear tube procedure. Little did I know, but I actually had these tubes when young. Which is maybe, genetically, why Miki has had so many ear infections and destroyed us with her late night crying. But she was so excited to be there!

And then they gave her some nitrous oxide or some such and tucked her hair out of the way...

Later, at home, she couldn't walk that well but really wanted to hug everyone in sight. Very friendly and upbeat. And she turned this big chair box into a cool cabin.

"You can't see my tubes!" she says.

SLC and beyond

Hello, we are on a trip. The short flight to SLC was a real pleasure. I had a whole aisle between me and these sticker stickers. And then the flight attendants gave us juice!

Of course we were quite eager to see what Grambee herself was up to.

(She is getting smaller and also made me make this picture smaller.  But she will get bigger again and then I'll put in a bigger picture.)

One thing she was doing was making us all wear these cards on our foreheads and ask questions to determine what we were. It's a hard game.

These guys have also been bedeviling Grambee; if she tries to take a rest they like to gather as many toys and musical instruments outside her bedroom door and make a huge amount of noise.  When she asks them what they're doing, they say, "We want you to be available."

Oh wait!  The first thing we did, almost, was go to "Disney on Ice:  Toy Story 3"  thanks to Grace and Jim and everyone.  Whoa.  We got there late and it was still really long!  But an excellent spectacle!  The girls loved it.

And then there was this amazing "Barbie" part with a lot of aerobics and unitards for all the Dads that had come, and then she skated with Ken!  He did like a triple-lutz!

Oh yeah, we had an adventure today with the Holladay Rocks!  That's my brother Jim's family.  Here's a small sampling of his and Grace's children--Margo, Matthew and Bonnie.  Kool-aid and chicken nuggets were had by all.  And broccoli.  But not by Phoebe, who alas is not pictured.

Our girls love playing with their Rock cousins, but Ida is especially obsessed with their dog, Killy.  He's not named after a strange clown, but actually the great skiier Jean Claude Killy.

Because these people are skiiers so serious they'd just laugh at Uncle Arthur.  But because we're not, really, they agreed to go sledding with us.  Soon we drove up the canyon, away from this 65 degree weather, to Gorgoza Park!

We got back in time to eat some peanuts with Jim.  "Peanuts are the best!" Ida sang.  And Miki was lucky to get a peanut-cracking lesson from Jim himself:

Then he told her some things about milking cows and supply vs. demand.

She was rapt.