california dreaming

t.s. eliot writes that april is the cruelest month, but here in california i think fall is pretty wicked.  while the rest of the country marvels at the changing leaves and that crisp autumnal chill out here in the west we get schorching triple digit septembers, choking santa anta octobers, and a bevy of floods and fires for your november.  in this california house fall meant going back to the 3-1 commute after a swedish fidfam summer and a feast-or-famine family time.  but winter, well here's the secret.  winter is what california (and this little house in the ranch) does best.  i know, "dreaming of a white christmas" and that snuggling by the fire.  but give me a desert or beach winter evening, some sand and (as b. put it best) a string of white lights around a palm tree and call it christmas.  this year, this winter, it seems i claimed my little corner of california.

before december slips away, here are some snapshots of the best moments with f&f.

who needs snow when you have wednesday elf hunts in the ooc?

did i say it didn't snow?

if disneyland was magical, spending a few days with the fidlers were "infinity"!

owen showing off his big boy moves at the dana point harbor:

then back to laguna beach for some cliffside, sunset photo ops:

adventure home:

there was no evergreen this year. . . but a whole lot of holiday!

i confess-- we don't have a christmas box, we officially have a christmas cabinet.  (we do have a thanksgiving box, a halloween box, easter, valentines and yes i officially gave in and made a mini st.patty's box).  of course i'm sure this is no big surprise--my own brother exclaimed (peeking in my closet, by the way): you have a lot of stuff!

but i defend my stuff.  true, i have more or less a ribbon and paper cabinet and an ever-encroaching "craft" closet (thanks to a garage that is no longer a garage but a haven for "stuff"). i like to think of our house as defenders of the "reuse" R in the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra.  closing argument:  owen found an empty cardboard wheel of ribbon on the table and said: mom, we should put this in the recycling bin and then we can do a truck project and this could be the wheel!

i mention this because today i was confronted with a whole lot of holiday "stuff" as we continued phase 4.7 (or 12.3?) of re-rorganizing (or re-nesting? really, we haven't technically been "home" a whole heck of a lot in the last few years) closets, shelves, cabinets, and crawl spaces.  and as much as i was eager to live in a simpler aesthetic and box up several dozen glittery and glass bird ornaments, now five artificial trees (none of which look remotely like an evergreen--my rule for "fake"), and a whole herald of angels i was already plotting next year's holiday explosion.  there's a great moment in elf when ed asner santa comes back to santa's workshop and all the elves do a self-congratulatory jig and then quickly get back to work for next christmas.  my elf, of course, is owen and just as the day after thanksgiving he said: ok mom, time to put away "thanksgiving time" and start "christmas time" he kind of tsk-tsked me for "putting away" december when "it's not even JANUARY yet!".  he, of course, is already plotting for "januarytime."

this year, owen took on many more elf duties: he decorated his own mini-tree (complete with paper garlands made with nana, and felt ornaments made with brooke & ellise); wrapped his own presents (ribbon and lots and lots of tape!); painted clothespins for holiday magnets; stamped and stickered our holiday cards; decorated--or ate?--a gingerbread house (with lots of help from gramma & grampa!); and wrote a long letter to accompany cupcakes for santa and rudolph . . .

while we didn't get a "real" evergreen tree we did have a kind of gumdrop forest with unique conifers such as a pink bird tree and a leaning truffula tree.  michael brought back some gorgeous handmade angels from artifex in aalesund; our clothespins dressed up our fridge with a collage of holiday cards; and santa scored with owen's super-sprinkled vanilla cupcakes.

next stop: janumas!!

annual travel total

I had to figure out my number of days on the road for the year, and here are the numbers for 2009:

Home: 137 days (thanks to being home most of Oct, Nov & Dec)
Sweden: 177 days*
Netherlands: 10 days
Norway: 17 days
Travelling (in the air): 24 days

*The numbers for Sweden include the side trips to Finland, France, & Spain.

My number of actual air miles I think will be close to 150k... Needless to say, I have gold status with Alaska, Northwest/Delta, SAS, and Continental.

the coffee is still nasty

You can buy coffee in Oslo for 3 US dollars today! Apparently someone is getting their Nobel Peace prize tonight.

Cool Dog

I'm not sure what's been more fun on our evening walks-- the running tally of reindeer vs. Santa lights or getting Sierra in his winter coat. I think he'd rather pee on an electric candycane. . .


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sun is almost up

It's 11:20am here at the office in Ålesund, and this is the current view out my window. Only 4 more hours until it goes back to being pitch black!

in search of hermit crabs

around two o'clock this afternoon while we were in san juan capistrano picking up our greens we were hit with a westerly wind and followed it (with a quick detour for cocoa and gingerbread lattes) to dana point past the harbor, past baby beach, past the tall ships, past the ocean institute until we were hanging over the rocky peninsula and noticed something peculiar.  wonderfully peculiar--the tide was at 1.2 (i don't really know what that means but the ocean docent told me it was why we had so many marvellous tide pools--yes he really was an ocean docent with a name tag and everything) thanks to a full harvest moon and the timing of the westerly wind.  really, now that i'm typing this it is sounding like a strange but beautiful dream and it played itself out like that.  we were handed these gorgeous hand-illustrated "low impact" pamphlet to southern california tidepools and went on a scavenger hunt ("mom--do you see this stick?  ok, don't poke it at the sea aneneome.  they don't like it and it's disruptive.").  we found tangerine orange sea stars, gritty sea anenomes, mountains of mussels. . . and searched and searched for hermit crabs.  although owen's curiosity granted us a "hermit crab expert" ("usually they're right under here. . just look for walking shells" explained steve the docent) we didn't find any--but we did spot the resident seal (who doesn't like to get wet "he just curls those flippers up and cringes when the tide comes back in") and the inside tip that december 31 would be the best low tide of the year. i can't think of a better way to spend the last day of the year. . .

here's the mini-slide show:

j