End of December update

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville, this Christmas season.  Sometimes this time of year can feel like hitting a patch of whitewater on an otherwise tranquil river: we've been paddling along, heading with the current, and then all-of-a-sudden everything is different.  But I mean that in a good way: it's good to wake up to how far we've come, and also to disrupt the everyday just a little bit.  

So here are a few "how far we've come" tidbits.  Inkling, who as we all know is a total theater hound, reports that 2023 has been a banner year:

Inkling's show count: 59 different live performances plus 25 repeats!

I have had one paper (accepted last year) come out, another accepted that will come out next year.  The mathematics publication timeline is much slower than in many other academic professions, so speedy responses or turnarounds is rare, but both of these papers had fast reviews and even faster revision processes, which is lovely.  Here's the letter I got from an editor earlier this week from a revision I submitted last week: 

"Thanks for sending this final version of your paper, which I will be happy to publish in [the journal].  I will be in touch if any issues arise during production."

Wonderful!!!!

My guy has gone far this year, in the literal sense.  He's been to a dozen countries (so many countries!) on three different continents.  The Tuesday before Christmas, for example, I got this snippet of email:

Taxiing in Malaysia.   

Turkey in 11 hours.  

See you Thursday.   

For those of you keeping track, this brings his lifetime total up to 58 countries, 41 of which he has biked in.

As a mostly-stay-at-homebody this past month, I instead reveled in people.  Getting ready for Christmas, seeing all the peeps, was a joy.  This year, I continued the tradition of preparing marzipan decorations with family . . . and then continued the tradition (whoops!) of forgetting to bring out the marzipan on Christmas day.  But look at this collection of adorable marzipan thingies with eyeballs!

Inkling and I did the colored ones. 
B-child mashes all of her thingies flat, like cookies.

And of course the best part of the season is seeing friends and family.  I don't at all take this for granted; I have a good friend whose son was in the hospital on Christmas, another good friend who is spending her second Christmas as a widow, and others who are estranged from their families.  For all those reasons and many more, I'm so glad that I get to be with people who make me feel grounded and whole, who remind me of who I am, where I come from, and where I want to go.  

My dad and his wife did an amazing job
(as always) of decorating their home
and opening it up to many people.

My sister brought a bunch of meals for us to eat. 
Her husband brought me two pieces of drywall to fix the hole in my ceiling!

Somehow my youngest sister escaped all my photos.  But I snagged her daughter sitting with many of my kids, blending right in!

Inkling, Anika, Kiersten, Bchild, Cchild, David, and A-child.

And here are a few more photos sent my way from my offspring.  

Sizzling and her husband,
dancing to Footloose in Singapore.

Christmas dogs, courtesy of Gosling

Gosling and Santa at work.

David, Kinderling, and my three grandchildren.

Nelson and T, in front of a beautiful tree.

So happy!

And that's the end-of-2023 news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous!

A hat [return] trick

I've mentioned once or twice that I pick up orphaned clothes off the street and rescue them.  So, perhaps you can imagine my apprehension when I got the following text right before Christmas:

This is Bob [not real name], your neighbor. June shared your contact. I wondered if you could help me. Georgina [not real name] my wife had a ski hat very similar to yours and she lost it. She and I have been looking all over for a replacement. She was given it as a gift and I was trying to find her a replacement for a gift, but I can't find one. Do you know where you purchased it? Thanks for thinking about it. Any leads would be more helpful than google or any of the other search engines I have used. I hope you and your family are otherwise well. Thanks.

Oh, geezy peezy:  I'd been caught.  I had a strong suspicion I knew which hat he was asking about, largely because I only had one hat that was notable; it was a multicolored hat I'd found a year-ish ago at the local tennis courts, sitting there all by itself.  It was awfully nice of him not to accuse me of stealing it, I figured.  I re-read the text and saw the line about "Do you know where you purchased it?", and it struck me that maybe he actually thought I did buy it.  Huh.  I wrote back:

Bob, what did/does the hat look like? Georgina is welcome to the hat; I have several hats, and can gladly spare it! I didn't purchase any of my hats-- I tend to pick up hats from the street (etc) that are abandoned (often, left behind and rain drenched); I launder them and keep them or pass them along. It's even possible the hat Georgina is missing is one I rescued. All the more reason to return/give it to you!

Then I ducked and waited for the "how dare you"s to fly.  Instead, I got this.

Thanks so much for texting back. I am so glad you are out saving hats and even better reducing consumption. You definitely may have saved Georgina's. I have to find a picture, but I can send you one soon. If you have the hat and I got it back for her for Christmas, it would be a tour de force gift. If you are the finder, I would definitely come up with some kind of finders fee. Thanks again!!

Off the hook!  He eventually did find a picture; she was wearing the hat I figured he was talking about on the very tennis courts where I'd found it.  Golden!  So I told him I'd swing by. He was effusive; it was the day before Christmas, and he had a special gift on the way for his wife!

 Thanks so much. . . . you can put in mailbox if I am not home. She is away for the day. So it will not take away the surprise. I feel a little " Gift of the Magi"esque. Have a wonderful holiday and safe trip back into town.

And then after Christmas . . . 

She fortunately did not even move us south to warmer weather to complete the O'Henry trick in gift of the Magi.

Look at that smile!

I'm so happy! Thanks for the cheery photos!

Even though he was very happy, I still feel a little guilty about snagging the hat and being the possible reason she'd been separated from her fave hat for so long.  And, extra fortuitously, I got a couple of lovely knit hats for Christmas, so I'm perfectly delighted to send my foster hat back home to its forever family! 

Wearing many new hats all at once.
I'm rich in hats, for sure!

 

Gingerbread 2023

For many years now, Christmas at my home has revolved around gingerbread decorating and eggnog.  We open presents, too, but we wanted to build in something that moved the focus of the day away from that, and gingerbread decorating seems to be a great shared creative experience.  

Everyone helps!

I love watching people get immersed in decorating.

What emerges each year is a house with a story.  The family is so enamored of Gosling's (usually macabre) narration, they assign her the role of creating the accompanying video.  

This year, Gosling brought a bunch of friends to help.
If I could upload the video, you'd hear many of their voices in the video.

The video she made this year is apparently too big to upload, so I'll transcribe it here for your entertainment.  (And did I mention "macabre"?  There's a bit of gratuitous gingerbread gruesomeness ahead.

****

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, there lived two brothers, who lived in a gingerbread land  made of candy, all candy. It turns out there were also other people, sheep, rainbow mermaids on the roof, trying to make their siren calls.   

Mermaid on the roof, sheep on the ground.

Now the brother Angus was a straight shooter; he wore his hand-made sweaters buttoned up. He had his red hair dyed to perfection.  

Inkling "knitted" this cabled sweater for Angus.

How to dye your hair red in Gingerbread land.

And then he had this brother, named Argus, who enjoyed a more interesting life. He could see a lot more too, with a lot more eyes.  You can tell by their fashion sense that they're related.  [me: ???]

Argus on the roof, with a chocolate cow.

There was a big accident in this town at 3:00.  You see, the young man over here had been cleaning gutters on the roof with no protection, without any ladders, and he fell to his death. The doctor here tried to save him.  It was covid, so he was still wearing a mask.  

When gingerbread people fall,
sometimes their heads break off.

It was extra tragic, because the house didn't even have gutters -- it just had roofing --so he was cleaning the house for nothing.  But as he passed, the biblically accurate* angel (behold!  we bring you tidings of bad joy!) came to carry his soul to heaven. 

*  The cherubim went in whatever direction the head faced, without turning as they went. Their entire bodies, including their backs, their hands and their wings, were completely full of eyes, . . . -- Ezekial 10

And also the angel was concerned for another soul; it was still questionable what had happened to him or where he may be going, but he's in his last days . . . but he does have his comfort peanut. (Even though he's extremely allergic to peanuts, so it's kind of  a poor choice of a comfort object).

Gingerbread man down, clasping a comfort peanut

****

And. . . . that's the end of the story.  Yeah.

Hope your Christmas was magical!

O, holey ceiling!

 I made a hole in my ceiling on purpose, and here's how and why I did it.

Last week, I noticed that there was a bit of indication of water damage in the living room, which I eventually traced to a very crumbly pipe leading into a radiator on the second floor. I called in our plumbers, who looked at the situation over, and who said, 

"Yup, it's a crumbly pipe! We're going to need to replace it . . . but before we do, we need to figure exactly how the pipe gets from the boiler to the radiator, so you're going to have to hire somebody to put a hole in the living room ceiling.  We don't do that, but we need to see how the pipes twist and turn there. So call us after those other people make the hole, and then we'll come back and work on replacing the pipe."

I suppose I could hire somebody to make the hole for me, but I know that several times in the past I've seen the repair bill and shuddered, and thought I could do that myself.  . . . So (steels self to destroy part of the house I live in . . . ) So, yeah, I figured I would do my best to make the hole myself.

Tools I gathered

• Drop cloths for the floor
• Stepladder
• Hammer
• Flat head screwdriver (I don't have a chisel).

Our home is old enough that we don't have drywall; I'm already pretty familiar with the fact that our walls and ceilings are plaster. I made like Michelangelo and used my hammer and screwdriver (like a mallet and chisel) to start chipping away. After knocking down about a centimeter's thickness of plaster, I came to a surprise: it looked like metal grating with metal rods.  Oh, heck!  Was there a set of steel bars holding up my ceiling?!?  Because there's no way I could saw through steel bars . . . 

Okay, here I want to say two things.  The first is that, for people, who've done a lot of construction, you probably already knew what I was about to find in my ceiling. I've done plumbing and electrical work around modern homes; I've even put up drywall myself. But I haven't done a lot of construction on older homes, I really didn't know what I'd find---hence the trepidation.

The second thing is that putting on a theater show two years ago gave me a lot of psychological help with knocking a hole in my ceiling. This theater show that I put on met with one roadblock after another: cases of Covid flared up; several actors took other jobs in the middle of rehearsals and we had to find new actors; the administration had numerous bouts of worrying about the suitability of the script, or of the timing, or of the general wisdom of being funny in an academic institution. There were many times that I really figured that the show was doomed, but I made it my mantra to not look too far down the road, and rather to just keep doing what I could to move ahead for now. I promised myself I'd keep trying until there really was no other choice. . .  and miraculously, the show happened, and it was a huge success. 

So as I was looking at my ceiling, and thinking, oh my gosh, I'll never get through that next layer, I remembered the show, and I decided that I would just keep doing what I could until I could make no more progress.

I chipped away a whole bunch of the plaster underneath that metal mesh, and in doing so discovered that the metal mesh was much more pliable and breakable than I had thought initially.  I could get through a bunch of the mesh using my hammer and screwdriver; I also then brought along

• a bolt cutter,

which worked quite well at making snips so I could bend the mesh around and away.  

In the middle of this, I also got

• a bandaid
• work gloves.

Pro-tip: do not get blood on the ceiling.  A ceiling that drips water is one kind of annoyance; a ceiling that drips blood is an entirely different kind of horror film.

I was feeling pretty dang impressed with myself for getting through the plaster, and then the metal mesh, and then another centimeter of plaster, when all of a sudden I discovered . . . wood.  Uh-oh.  Had I reached the floor of the room above?  What was this sheet of wood doing there?

I'm going to say, I nearly gave up and got ready to call in the professionals at that point, but I remembered thing #2 above, and decided that even if I couldn't get through the wood, at least I could clear away all the plaster and grating from the hole from where I wanted the hole, leaving only the wood visible.  So I set back to work with my hammer and screwdriver, and lo and behold, I discovered something wonderful: a hole!  There was space between some of the wood. I hadn't reached a layer that was a solid sheet; it was strips of lath.  A solid sheet of plywood to cut through (above my head, mind you) is really daunting; little strips of lath I can totally handle.  So I added a few tools to my excursion:

• Extension cord
• Jigsaw

I kept working with my hammer and screwdriver, clearing out all the plaster under and between the laths, and then with my handy-dandy jigsaw, I cut through the laths themselves. And, voilà! 

There is a hole in my ceiling, and with a

• bikelight

you can see how the pipes rise up and turn the corner. I hope the plumbers will be happy!  

All that remained to do was to use the 

• broom
• dustpan
• vacuum cleaner.

Tomorrow, when the plumbers come, I'll also get to use my

• wallet

but today's work was completely wallet free!  

update, bowled over this week

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  In the hustle-bustle-swirl of events, the one event that really stands out was Christmas Bowling, so I'm just going to dwell there a bit.

This has become a treasured family tradition, to which we often rope in other enthusiastic bowlers, several of whom genially whomp our butts (looking at you, Connor!).

We had a very happy crowd this year.

One of my fave aspects this year was seeing C-child, just barely a year old, totally get into it all.  

She really, really, really wanted to pick up the balls.

C-child is not only walking these days; she's running -- if you can call teetering left-to-right, from one foot to the next, with her arms spread like that of a scary monster, while moving generally forward, "running".  All the big burly bowlers several lanes away flirted with her as she hurtled past, heading toward the racks where she would attempt to co-opt their balls. 

This was fun, too, she thought.

After the traditional round, most of the kids left; then Inkling and I celebrated the "challenge round" together.  In this version, we put up the bumpers and give each set its own rules:

1. Use your non-dominant hand.
2. Use the dinosaur stand.
3. Bowl between your legs
4. Bowl backwards (also between your legs)
5. Hop on one foot
6. Bowl blindfolded; the other person guides you.
7. Bowl singing ("Jingle Bowls")
8. Bowl while doing the Charleston
9. Bowl using the bumpers.
10. Bowl holding your breath.

Hopping on one foot.

Inkling outscored me this year: I'm looking forward to a rematch in future years!

Lots of other stuff happened besides this: I pulled a muscle in my back running early in the week; I had a paper accepted (with minimal revision! that's a real treat); the semester came to a close; I started some major money moves to get ready for my transition to retirement.

I don't know if the twelfth day before Christmas involves radiators piping, but that was another little adventure this week.  I realized we were getting a bit of condensation on the living room ceiling, probably because of a crumbling cast-iron pipe leading to a radiator in the room above.

I don't think the pipe is supposed to look like that . . . 

We had a plumber come who agreed "this doesn't look good", and explained we'd have to open up holes in the walls and ceilings to trace exactly where this pipe goes.  The plumber explained they don't do that ourselves; we'd have to have another handyman come in for that.  Well, guess what?  I think I can knock holes in walls/ceilings myself.  It's possible I can even close the walls up myself again after the plumbers have replaced the cast-iron one with a new copper one.  So, oof, this'll be a big, expensive Christmas present to ourselves.  

In some much prettier pictures of water, here are three of my favorite photos from OfSnough on his travels.  

Here are some photos of Marina Bay (Singapore)--
the richest part of the city and the site of the Formula 1 race. 

At night . . . 

. . . and by day.

My guy'll be home in about a week.  As he gets ready to take plane-after-plane to return to his loving wife, I'll share this xkcd comic as an homage to his voyages.  He totally wants to be in the rear of this plane!

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be radiant in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly bowled over.

Paper or (in) plastic

My newspaper carrier left me a note in the paper on Thanksgiving day thanking me for being a subscriber, and also delivering the news that he was stepping down, retiring. 

He's been a great carrier. After we moved to this house I sent him a note asking if he could please deliver my newspaper "naked": that is, without wrapping it in a plastic bag. He enthusiastically agreed, and even reached out to all of his other customers, offering the them the option to likewise get their papers delivered naked.  I give him a big tip every December, and this December will be no different.

I'm glad for him that he's done -- after all, look at me heading into my own retirement.  I love it!!  But I'm also biting my nails about the next newspaper carrier, and for good reason.

To whit:  

• We didn't get a paper on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I filled out the electronic "missing paper; please deliver tomorrow" form. 
• We didn't get a paper on Sunday (neither Saturday nor Sunday). I filled out the electronic "missing paper; please deliver tomorrow" form. 
• We didn't get a paper on Monday. I filled out the electronic "missing paper; please deliver tomorrow" form, and then I called the office.  

The very nice person (let's call her Sylvia) on the other end of the telephone line looked at our route, and realized that we have a new carrier who already has a bunch of other routes . . . it has to be so, so hard to be a newspaper carrier now that people like me who get physical papers are so few and far between.  Sylvia offered to bring me the papers herself, and so I got Saturday, Sunday, and Monday papers on my porch on Monday afternoon.

• We didn't get a paper on Tuesday. I filled out the electronic "missing paper; please deliver tomorrow" form. 

I got a very nice email from another person saying that my Tuesday paper would be (re)-delivered on Wednesday, and suggesting that maybe my previous papers had gotten stolen.

• On Wednesday, I got the Wednesday paper, but not the Tuesday paper. I replied to the very nice email letting the person know what had happened, as a FYI, and also saying that newspaper theft isn't really an issue I'd ever had, so I don't think that was the reason for my non-delivery.
• On Wednesday afternoon, I got a second Wednesday paper.  But no Tuesday paper.  Sigh.

Since then, I've gotten my newspapers delivered every morning just fine.  But, not surprisingly, they all come in plastic bags.  I really, really want to reach out to my new carrier to ask if I can ditch the plastic, but I also don't want to jinx the delivery.  I'll be traveling for a bunch of January and might put a hold on the paper during that time (not sure, because my husband will be home), and that adds extra complications for a person who already has a bunch of newspaper routes to keep track of, so I think I'll wait until I get back from my travels and then reach out to the carrier to ask about de-plastic-ifying my paper delivery.  

I continue to be grateful that my community continues to support a local newspaper.  I've seen other local newsrooms fold, one after another.  Our own region is fortunate beyond reckoning to continue to have coverage of local events, local politics, and all sorts of interesting items of nearby interest.  (One of my long-time-but-long-lost friends just published a cool book, I just read in the paper the other day!  And she's having an author's event at a nearby bookshop!)  I suppose I could read much of this online instead of on paper, but browsing a website is just not as satisfying [to me] as holding up and folding large sheets of paper, being able to tuck down a corner or clip something out, and put it somewhere in space (as opposed to somewhere on my computer).  Plus, I love love love the crossword puzzles: another huge reason why paper trounces electronic for me.

Because of all that, even if I can't figure out how to eliminate/reduce the plastic that it comes in, I'm going to keep getting the paper that comes inside the plastic.  But I do hope that eventually I can convince yet one more hard-working person in the world to accommodate my quirks, and get back to naked papers sometime in 2024.

Family update, early December

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  It's also rich and full on the other side of the world, apparently.  Early this week, my guy wrote to say,

[I'm flying from ] Istanbul on the way to Kuala Lumpur. A half hour ago we flew over the south end of the Caspian Sea. Tehran was a hundred kilometers south of our flight path. . . . We will also fly over Pakistan turning more southeast to avoid Afghanistan airspace. Then it will be India, the Indian Ocean and then Malaysia.

He's been wafting lovely descriptive emails my way of what he's seeing.  He's also having interesting ("interesting") travel adventures.  The most recent is that he's traveled so danged much that he doesn't have a blank page in his passport to go to Vietnam, and they won't let him in with only partially-filled pages left.  Since staying in Malaysia would be a waste of . . . actually, I don't know what it would be a waste of, but it's apparent that some extra trip, any extra trip is imperative. He writes,

So I looked again at the rules for travel to nearby countries that do not require visas for Americans.  The only southeast Asian country that does not require a visa is Thailand.  So I may go there.  

But not directly. The flights from KL to Thailand are expensive on the weekend, so I am staying in Malaysia until Monday when the flights are cheap. I will be in Penang until Monday or maybe longer. Toward the end of the week, I will fly to Singapore as planned.  I was able to cancel my hotels in Vietnam. 

At any rate, that's a little of what my guy is up to.  Somewhat closer, but still out of the country, Xson tells me that he's recovered enough from his terrible motorcycle accident that he's walking again.  Life is still very hard in Haiti, but I'm so glad he's back on his feet (literally, if not figuratively).  From a different distant -- but closer-than-Haiti-- location, Nelson sent a pic with an explanation: 

Nelson:  At work just got done with the front

I myself expressed surprise at what the ground looked like in Minnesota.  In comparison (bringing it back to my home state), here's what it looked like outside my bedroom window this Wednesday.

Snow on the branches! 
There were gorgeous snow flurries as I was walking to the office.

And indeed, December is here. Per the family advent calendar, this is what we did this week

• Make Springerle
  
  

  

  Many elves make light work

  
  
• Put out Santa statues (including the TP snowman outfit my sister gifted me, augmented by a TP sweater a friend foisted on me).
  
  



Well-dressed toilet paper

• Decorate the tree
• Give St. Nick's day donations to charity
• Saw a fab show at our local theater

  

  Ready to head inside for
  Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

  
  
• Mailed some Springerle
• Went to a ballet concert

Achild and Bchild were quite the performers!

The Little Farm library had new occupants come and go (there was some pretty quick turnover in the cow population this week)!

And I know that's a lot, but even so, there was more!  For one, I got an email from the Fulbright folks.  I knew that in December they'd decide whether to pass my application along for further review, or to decline it.  Basically, they're deciding whether to vote me off the island, grant-wise. I'd been steeling myself for hearing "no", preparing myself not to take the decision personally.  So I put all that practice to good use when I got the email saying "a decision has been made".  I took my big breath and opened the email . . . to read that I had to log into the Fulbright site to actually get the decision.  I let my breath back out, logged into the site, and finally found the link to the decision letter.  I took another big breath, opened that letter, and got to read this:

Thank you for applying to the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program for the 2024-25 competition. It is a pleasure to inform you that your application is recommended to proceed to the next phase of the review process for a Fulbright U.S. Scholar award (Science, Technology and Education, 24289-PA, Panama). It is being forwarded to the proposed host country, the U.S. Department of State, and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board for review . . . 

So, maybe I'll go to Panama next year?  With my guy, of course, since there are lots of nearby countries he can bop around to while we're there, provided he gets a new passport with many more pages.

Finally, just a cute story.  When my kids were young, instead of saying "Don't push all the elevator buttons!!!! No, don't!!", I'd say, "Once the elevator starts moving, we have to hold on the handrail for safety!".   My daughter Inkling, now in her 30's, says she still holds on.  Well, one of my running buddies just sent me this cute photo, which I pass along with an anonymizing star.  

Becca writes: 
"We aren’t old enough for seatbelt races yet,
but we have fully embraced your tip for having
the kids hold on when we ride in an elevator!
No excessive button pushing. Such a win! 

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures. May the elevators you're holding onto all be going up. 

Semester is ending, advent is starting.

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville. Even though I'm not teaching classes, nearing the end of the semester gives me that usual sense of rushing and striving to wrap things up.  I'm guessing this feeling arises now partly because the work that my two independent study students are doing is coming to a close, and we all want it to close well.  It's probably also because I'd been pulling together a talk on Salvador Dalí (whose life I didn't know very well before I started the project) and in particular about his painting that illustrates the fourth dimension (which I did actually know well), . . . and figuring out how to give this talk in Spanish in the class I'm auditing.  "Suelos de baldosas": tiled floors.  "Puntos de fuga": vanishing points.  All sorts of things that I didn't know how to say before prepping all of this, but now I do.  Of course, part of the sense of rushing and striving is because my office, where I do research, is sandwiched between colleagues who are teaching and doing regular committee work, and the vibe carries.

What else did I do this week?  I drove my husband away.  More specifically, I drove him to the train station so he could head overseas for a few weeks.  Some snippets from his letters home:

• A month ago, I picked an aisle seat for my first flight from New York JFK to Kuala Lumpur via Istanbul . . .  when the flight attendant announced “Doors closing” no one was moving down the aisles toward the back of the plane. I slid to the middle seat, fastened my seatbelt, and watched for that one last person hustling down the aisle. She never appeared. . . As soon as we soared over water, I lay down, seat belt fastened, and smiled myself to sleep.
• Istanbul Airport has sleeping lounges . . .  A glass wall surrounds the space. Inside the wall fake plants hides the sleepers from view through the translucent walls and give the enclosure a more peaceful feeling. Around the edge of the rows of chairs, there is enough space on the floor to  lie flat. That’s where I slept for a half hour or so off and on throughout the day.
• I just arrived in Malaysia.  I am seeing glitter reindeer and tall purple Christmas trees.

Jeannie, my husband's sister, did a different kind of traveling -- fewer sleeping adventures, and even more connections, although for her, it was connections with people.  She writes,

This was a milestone. I flew back to Boston Thanksgiving weekend to attend my 50th reunion. Thought you may want to share it in the next weekly newsletter.

Thought you may want to share it in the next weekly newsletter.  (Yes, yes, I do!  What a happy looking gathering!)

Kinderling has been torturing her kids with fun stuff.  She says:  

We took C-child to an amusement park today (it was her bday gift from a friend) Her first ride- turtle whirl Bchild was not in a great mood today, as she didn't nap. C-child was not phased by the spinning turtles

Later, we went to Tuba Christmas, which was indoors this year, and therefore not quite as kid-accessible, as you can see Bchild explaining adamantly.   

Tubas!  Christmas carols!  Fingers in your ears!

Speaking of Christmas approaching, it's been good to break out the family advent calendar and get cracking on opening those flaps to reveal the days' activities.

December 1: Tuba X-mas
December 2: Bring up boxes and get out Christmas clothes

Perhaps you are wondering how the Little Cow/Farm Library is going.  (Perhaps you're not wondering, but I'm going to tell you anyway.)  A rain blew through that soaked the cow card someone had left last week.  The colors all ran together.  When the cow card eventually dried out, it looked like a very cool tie-dye cow, and eventually someone took it.   

Rainbow cow beanbag, Tie-dye cow card,
and plain cow beanbag.

Finally, I wanted to share the expected, but still sad, news that our family has said goodbye to the faithful Watson.  Gosling writes, 

Watson passed peacefully by my side this afternoon. He left this world with so much love from those near and far.

About 15 min before the home euthanasia crew arrived, he settled in for a final rest with his mama. As we sat on the bed we had put outside, and I gently stroked his soft head and ears, his eyes closed peacefully and he seemed to tell us he was ready. Thank you to Colin for getting these final special moments on camera. Colin said his goodbyes and let me and Watson have our final talks, kisses, love, hugs, and tears together. And don’t you worry, his final meal included chicken-fil-a nuggets and pupperoni. He left surrounded by so much love from near and far, and a happy full belly.

It's hard to know what to say, so I'll just close with a photo that seems to capture what we're feeling.   In the park near my home the trees have lost all their leaves for the winter, but the rose bushes are still bearing flowers, and they still smell as sweet as when I visited them with friends in June.

And that's the news from our family.  Hugs.