traveloguing

The real results of our passport photo extravaganza was an amazing trip over Christmas to Hong Kong and Nepal to visit Abe's family. All of the immediate family gathered to celebrate Abe's dad's 60th birthday. It was also our first time to see where his parents have been living for the last few years.

A few travel stats from the trip:

- 13 days

- 8 airplanes

- 65 hours in airports or on airplanes. For our family of 5 that multiplies out to 325 hours or 13 1/2 days.

- Travel by airplane, taxi, train, double-decker bus, ferry, ox cart, canoe, and elephant.

- 16,000 miles traveled, give or take.

And, some photos from Hong Kong. Credit: most of these are courtesy of Abe's dad, who is an excellent photographer!

Streets of Hong Kong.

Building where parents live. Check out the sweet circular picture window at the top! 

Birthday dinner! 

Skyline. 

In the days that followed, we were so grateful for the ipad mini Christmas gift. 

Isis at her adorable best. 

Xena waiting to pounce on prawns. 

 Lots of random sleep time.

 Stanley market.

With kids in tow. 

life, last month

A few moments captured on camera.

Genghis playing with some of his best friends: Xena, Dump Truck, and Excavator.

Xena with pipe cleaners and a strainer. Interestingly, I did this same activity with Genghis when he was Xena's age and posted about it here. By way of comparison, it was clearly more successful with Xena.

Genghis made a train out of toy tubs one morning before preschool.

As a side note, here's our Christmas playlist this year. Feel pretty good about this one.

halloween

Now that the Twix and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are gone from our candy bag, there's not much left of the Halloween spirit here. Anyone want one of our Crunch bars?

And, after looking through our selection of costume photos, I'm determined to hire a professional photographer to follow us around everywhere we go. Life around here moves too fast for stills.

Our costume theme was Children's Books.

Genghis was the Excavator from "Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site". Costume chosen by him, designed by Abe. 

 Xena was Max from "Where the Wild Things Are". Costume chosen and designed by me.

Isis was the Very Hungry Caterpillar. Costume revamped from Genghis's 3 years ago. (Sorry, Isis.) The best thing about her costume was when I would carry her in her back carrier and wrap the costume around us both, so I had a caterpillar dangling from my back.

challenge of the week

The Challenge: Get passport photos for children ages 3, 18 months and 3 months.

The Solution:
This tutorial + this software. Add a camera, stool, sheet of butcher paper, 2 parents, and children. Mix briskly on a Sunday morning.

The results:

Oh geez.

there is life after grad school

We have had many good things to celebrate in our family lately:

- moving into a new home

- Abe finishing his dissertation

- welcoming baby Isis

- being completely and totally finished with the phd program

- enjoying amazing California weather

- Abe having no more dissertation work to do on every evening and weekend known to man

- starting a nanny with the kids so I can work part time, and Genghis starting preschool

- no more dissertation

Did I mention that Abe finished his dissertation? We are free! It took longer to complete the "last stage" of his thesis than it did to grow and birth our baby.  But it's done. Done. Done. Done.

I am just a little bit completely ecstatic.

But if the last 9 months have taught us anything, it is to simplify our lives. In keeping with that, I have decided that it is time to officially announce the scaled-back scope of this blog.*

I love capturing the stories, moments, and absurdities of life in the form of blogging, but it's just not happening right now. At the same time, I humbly recognize a devoted group of readers whose Number One purpose in reading my blog is to see photos of our three fabulous rugrats. So, I am going to try to post photos regularly, maybe with captions and stories as a bonus.

Some day, I want to tell stories again. For now, I will work on just living them instead.

With that said, here are a few photos.

Xena at a great garden in Palo Alto. 

Genghis and Xena at the garden. 

Super smile from Isis! 

Genghis reconstructing the Hong Kong skyline and harbor out of legos, based on photos sent from grandma. 

* Okay, I'm pretty sure no one really cares about the stated purpose of said blog. But writing it down officially will help ease my "A-type" mind.

5 things that made me happy today

1. This morning, while finishing my breakfast, I was treated to this scene: Genghis clad only in his Thomas the Train underwear and Xena's giant brown and turquoise hair bow, jumping spasmodically around the living room (he calls this "dancing") to We Wish You a Merry Christmas being played on an oversized floor piano.

2. I dusted our house from top to bottom for the first time ever (meaning, since moving in over 2 months ago). With hardwood floors, dusting necessitates a lot of sweeping and moving furniture and sneezing. Especially if you have 10 weeks of accumulated dirt. But the house feels so clean and fresh, except by the two diaper pails we have next to the bathroom. Remind me again that we won't have children in diapers for the rest of my existence.

3. I signed a contract to continue some evaluation work for a museum group that I have really enjoyed working with in the past. It's one of those few times when you make recommendations for how a museum should move forward with evaluation, and then they have the means and enthusiasm to actually do it.

4. Homemade chocolate chip cookies. Enough said.

5. The replacement cord to my digital piano arrived in the mail. I lost the cord in the move, and after looking in box after box wondering where I mislaid it, I finally ordered a new one. It felt silly to have the piano looking pretentiously like a normal upright piano but total useless with no power. Sadly, I don't have plans to play the piano even now that we have power. But the kids have loved it. Someday I will play again ... Also, I finally found the original cord later this afternoon while I was dusting. Go figure.

friday photos

One of the many awesome things my mom does is hand craft a special outfit for each of her grandchildren to wear for their blessing day in our church. We did Isis's blessing a few weeks ago. Here are some shots to show off her gown. I love the colors mom chose, almost as much as I love Isis's stubborn ebony mohawk.