go owen go!

after eating double helpings of green veggies to grow big and strong and learning to balance and fall without his pedals owen zoomed down the alleyway on his big boy bike!

voilà!

i used to have a subscription to real simple magazine and one of my favorite features went something like: take two bags of this from your pantry and one box of this from your freezer and voilà! something delish and fancy! since my boys have been superstars while i click clack away at the laptop (fixing the garbage disposal, going to costco, and doing dishes while i take a yoga break) it seemed time for some quick magic.  

for dinner: one rotisserie chicken, the remaninder of an overripe tomato, half of an ageing avocado, a lone scallion, half a box of taco shells, a handful of olives, the remainder of a bag of shredded cheese, the last of the lettuce form our csa basket  and some brown rice out of the freezer and black beans out of the pantry (hmmm things are sounding pretty pitiful around here--it's been a long, long week!) and a super  taco bar!  a squeeze of lime on the shredded chicken, some quick pico de gallo with the tomato, tacos crisp in the oven, and fancy bowls for the rest. a seriously delish and healthy meal!

for dessert: one sheet frozen pie dough (half of a box left from a quiche i made last week), frozen blackberries (leftover from smoothies) and the zest of our first lemon from our potted lemon tree and zing!  blackberry pockets! (alas, if i had only used the powdered sugar shaker instead of the flour!)

now michael is reading  fantastic mr. fox to a sleepy, sleepy owen (first bike ride with pedals today!!).  tonight: a bottle of castle rock pino and a purple pen and ta-da--an edited chapter ready to send on monday!

post-state-of-the-union observations

pointing to our president, owen exclaimed: "mom, what's that?"

"what?"

"that thing obama's wearing."

"a tie?"

"oh yes, i think all presidents must have to wear one."

owen the paleontologist

as most of you know, owen doesn't just like dinosaurs, he lives them.  not only does he have an ever growing dinosaur library (and a scientific dinosaur vocabulary) he can tell you the difference between the mesozoic and the carboniferous periods; he can spell micropachycephalasaurs (me, i'm not so sure); he can differentiate between a styrachasaurus and a triceratops.  and now, he can assemble a trex fossil!

having exhausted the "walking with dinosaur" series (and the "walking with monsters"--life before dinsoaurs.  go ahead, ask him about early arthropods!) he's been having fun with the kratt brothers and zoboomafo (thanks edy & jerry for the subscription to big backyard which came with this awesome dvd!)--in one epsiode they build a dinosaur out of a bag of bones (ok, they had exact puzzle-piece replicas but then they painted it and mixed it up for good fun).

so last night at nana & papa's house he had the idea to build his owEn dinosaur.  this morning i printed out a copy of a trex fossil (zoom dinosaurs by the way is a great dinosaur resource with accurate coloring pages--no anachronistic cavemen or grinning dragons) and left to edit chapter three of the diss.  when i came back after making minimal progress nana and owen assembled an entire  tyrannosaurus rex from papa's wood scraps.  and i must say, it's the most beautiful dinosaur i've ever seen!

and the completed skeleton (after owen carefully doublechecked his blueprint and directed the careful assembling of each incisor and cranial piece!):

just watch out for those carnivore teeth!

i've been drafting one long blog post in my head since the first week of january... but for now i'll just say i'm looking forward to my breakfast date with owen--peets coffee and i heart bagels followed by a work date in the office ("mommy i can work on my computer and you can work on your computer so you can finish your virginia woolf book").  we've been a super writing team (along with the rest of the supporting cast) and in the last few weeks i've done more writing than probably in the last few years. a good freind and dear mentor once told me that when i learn to write with owen then i'll finish my dissertation--more than that, i'll be a writer.  and of course, she's right. hoping to send off a massive chunk of my dissertation at the end of the month and move forward to meet filing deadlines as soon as april.  hoping to do more writiing here (and put up some promised project pics--i confess to just doing quick updates via fb) as well to keep the keys clicking and make note of the madness and joy that is our life... much love to the fidfam followers and happy janumas to those in the know!

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!!