Another Year, Another Toilet Bowl...

Once again we enlisted the help of our Seattle people to help us play football, cheer on the Patriots and cook a big dead bird. It was a chilly day for the annual Toilet Bowl "game"... which if you've ever tried to play sports with 4-6 year olds you know it's really just chasing them around the yard. Luckily, we had things like fires and adult libations to keep us warm-ish. Dinner was particularly tasty this year, largely thanks to our Director of Operations, Uncle B... and also thanks to him, we now we have a brining bucket... sitting in the garage waiting for next year.

We also had another reason to "give thanks" this year when an incident after a school assembly took 10 years off our parenting lives. When leaving share day from L's school (where each student talked about his/her holiday celebrations) we were all walking in a line to the car, on the sidewalk next to the building, when we heard a massive rumble, and whoosh the entire snowy/icy contents of the school roof came crashing down on the sidewalk. It missed EVERYONE except for poor Carmen, who was caught smack dab in the middle of the avalanche. She was scared out of her wits (as were mamas and Luce) but remarkably fine. Of course that didn't stop the police/firetrucks from showing up on the scene to make sure everything was OK. Lama, lama holiday drama. And that's how we started our Christmas vacation...

Climb Every Mountain...

Ford every stream. (seriously, who says ford?!? Silly Austrians).

Anyway, here's what happened in the first half of November. We had a SEVEN year old's birthday party at a rock climbing gym. It was great... once we got past the part in the beginning where the birthday girl emptied the contents of her stomach all over Mama Mer. Uff. However, showing her true colors as my daughter, Luce rallied like Tom Brady doing a 2 minute drill in the 4th quarter and finished the party strong. Whew.