This Post Brought to You by Kona Coffee

We got back from our travels a few days ago -- Soren and I spent some time in Santa Barbara while Chris did workshop stuff in Honolulu, and then I flew out to Kona and hung out with my hubby while Gramma, Grampa Richie and Auntie Kelly Ann (hereafter known as "The Goldens" because I can't be typing all those names all the time) took care of Soren for a few days. The trip had its ups and downs, but on the whole, it was great!

Chris flew with us as far as LAX, and was nice enough to let me use his first-class upgrade while he sat with Soren in Peasant Plus class. Have I mentioned that I love Chris? Because I do.

Soren and I had a great time in SB, enjoying the disgustingly nice weather. Gramma got out all the awesome old Fisher-Price toys she'd been hanging on to since 1977 (you know, back when Little People were still a choking hazard), and Soren was in heaven. OK, as an aside, remember how you used to be able to wind toys up? Why don't they do that any more? One of the toys Mom held on to was the Fisher-Price record player, and I got it down and was like, Oh, there's no way the batteries in this are still good, but then I remembered that you're supposed to wind it up! And then it goes! Only for thirty seconds, but who cares? If you want your toys to make annoying noises, you should have to work for it. Not like the big garbage truck Soren has, with the lever you can push down to make the horn honk CONTINUOUSLY FOREVER. Anyway, I'm sure Big Battery has the toy companies in its pocket, but I'd like to see a return to good old-fashioned winding up. </aside>

The Hess family was nice enough to have us over for dinner and give us some of Liam's old clothes, which was wonderful! Then Emily came over and gave Soren an awesome Sock Monster (I'll have to take a better picture of it one of these days) before we went to a lovely brunch featuring the hugest mimosas in the entire world. Sadly, this brings us to one of the lower points of the trip, which was the stomach bug that Soren had had a couple nights before, which then manifested in me after brunch, and which apparently I later passed on to Emily and Kelly Ann. And now Chris has it. So don't come near me, I guess.

Let's talk more about fun things, though. The Goldens hosted an Easter party, with egg decorating and egg hunting and candy! Soren even found a couple eggs before deciding that it was more fun to play with trucks!



And he had his first ride on a carousel! He was a little nervous, but managed to have some fun. When asked if he wanted to ride again, his answer was a prompt "No," but I'm sure he'll warm up to it.



He also got to run around making airplane noises with Grampa Richie and Kelly Ann...



And he gave Gramma some very nice kisses.



That's enough for now. In my next post: Why I will forever hereafter stick to flying REAL airlines; humuhumunukunukuapua'a, palila, and akiapola'au; and molten lava.

Wanted: Shower

Alternative title: Boring Crap about Water Heaters

Boy, the outpouring of personal secrets in my last post was just exhausting! Or maybe it was the romantic evening Chris and I spent on Sunday, cleaning wet boxes out of the basement because it turned out that there was a fair bit of water down there, and we thought it was flooding from all the rain we'd just had, but then we figured out that our water heater wasn't so much storing water as just giving it a place to rest on its journey to the floor, so we're getting a new water heater installed today. Sadly, we're not going tankless, because emergency water heater replacement isn't really the time to switch systems, but it would probably be prudent to schedule a tankless installation for March 11th, 2017, if everything I hear about water heaters' life spans is true.

The water heater at our house in Providence was over 40 years old. They just don't make 'em like they used to. On the other hand, they invented "efficiency" sometime in the last 40 years, so it probably would have been worth replacing.

For the Soren groupies out there, here's his latest milestone: forgetting people's names! Seth came over for dinner on Sunday, and Soren kept calling him "Steven" (he even told me that he wanted Steven to come over the next day). We had some friends over last night, and Soren kept calling their daughter "Molly" (her name is Brooke). I think there's a Molly in the preschool group at his day care, but I don't know any Stevens, so I don't know where he got that one.

Sorry about the boring post. Maybe we'll take a big trip to California tomorrow, just to liven things up. And then maybe I'll leave Soren in the capable hands of Gramma while I fly out to meet Chris in Hawaii. Yeah, that sounds good.

I'm It

I've been tagged with my first meme by alaskanmama! So exciting. And yet so time-consuming. And so I present: Five Things You Don't Know About Me (unless you're Chris).

I have a soundtrack.

I always have a song in my head. Every waking moment of every day. Right now, it's playing "Dock on the Bay," which is not that interesting because I heard that song earlier today, but I will more often than not wake up with a song in my head, and I have no idea where it comes from. Like "Saturday Night's All Right for Fighting." Why would any sane person wake up with that song in her head? Oh. Right. "Sane".

I hate The Mole.

Not the TV show, silly -- everyone knows I love THAT. I'm talking about the one on my chin. Good ol' Mom always used to call it my "beauty mark," which was nice, but I'm tired of it and I want to get rid of it.

I <3 unicorns.

And horses, and ponies. Even though I am not ten years old. I used to full-on believe in unicorns when I was younger, thanks to the gorgeous book Unicorns I Have Known, and it was a sad day when I realized those unicorns weren't real. I still love looking at pretty horses and ponies (and Chris will tell you that I ask for a pony several times a week, mostly in jest), and a couple of my favorite books are about unicorns: The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle, and the Firebringer Trilogy, by Meredith Ann Pierce (reviewed earlier in this blog). Unicorns are pretty. Shut up.

I want to start collecting things.

But the things I want to collect are weird. Most of you know that I love birdwatching, but I also have a thing for taxidermied birds. Hey, they're pretty, and they don't fly away. I'm just not sure there's an appropriate place in my home to put taxidermy. And the other collection I'd like to start is creepy war posters. They're such powerful images -- I'm fascinated by them. This collection should probably wait until there aren't any impressionable young children in the house any more.

I call myself an artist, but...

...I haven't worked on a painting in five years, if you don't count things I've done for work. Those little drawings I did for Soren over the summer are the only bit of "personal" art I've done since 2003. I want to paint and draw, I really do, but I feel like I'm completely out of ideas. Maybe I just need to look at the art of others to inspire me, maybe I need more time to think, I don't know.


Well, that's my five things... that took way too long. Now I will tag others! Megh! Mika! Emily! Christi or Adam or both! Tell me something I don't know.

More Art

...and here's Daddy's birthday card!

Soren's latest work

Here's a fine example of Soren's art. He was experimenting with the "pound the marker on the paper" technique in this particular work.