Happy Holidays

In this season of long nights, may your home be warm, and may you find a good book, a great album, or a new lego project to fill them.

Pink Yink Ink Drink

This is a Pink Yink Ink Drink. Today Wuggy Norple and Exploding Poptart discovered that you can make it with:
Blackberrries
Strawberries
Milk
Honey

It makes your face pink.

Winter Fat

Well, we've watched those squirrels getting fatter and fatter all fall. Now they are so fat and the trees so bare we finally pulled the car over during an errand to catch them on film, and they were so engaged with their meal, they posed beautifully so we could share them with you. They are so much fatter than the squirrels Exploding Poptart used to watch out the window at the church back in California. Even the Squirrels take winter more seriously here.

Snow Pie

We woke this morning to big fluffy flakes of snow. By the time we were dressed, the ground was a proverbial blanket of white. We busted the tags off snow-boots and waterproof gloves and made the first footprints on our street.


Wuggy Norple asked that we post his first snow-pie of the season.

Wedding

Finally the wedding was on. The great wedding of LouJones and Guy.
Papercup Mixmaster got to be one of the best men
Exploding Poptart got to perform the ceremony
And Wuggy Norple was the best flower thrower ever. [Gosh he looked sharp in his orange tie]

The cold afternoon in the Marin Headlands melted into a warm yellow glow that felt like the world's longest hug. What an auspicious beginning. Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Guy-Jones. We love you.

Our little band of travelers could not stay to close the party down, as we love to do. We had to catch an early morning flight back to the great white north. (mostly fog so far, the snow didn't stick). After being surrounded by people we love for 10 days, it was sad to leave. But as Wuggy Norple said in his thanksgiving toast "I'm thankful to spend time with friends, and to enjoy them for as long as I can before we go back."

Sunny Thanksgiving

For years we have celebrated Thanksgiving with Papa Saxophone and the boys. It feels sad not to be pulling giblets out of a turkey with them on a cold and damp Seattle morning, but we sure have enjoyed chopping and mixing with King Me and Mlle. here in California, where the sun streams down into their hillside home. Yesterday (after a sweet and too-short visit with Happy Potterer and Another-Other-Mother and my GuideDaughter Mookie) we spent the day making too many pies: Apple Walnut, Pecan and Pumpkin. ("That's half a pie per person!" said Papercup Mixmaster. I didn't tell him there were actually 2 pumpkin pies...)

Wuggy Norple made Cranberry sauce this morning, and is now the timekeeper for our thanksgiving schedule:
"It's 10:02- I think we are a LITTLE bit behind schedule for the Cranberry Sauce."

Sweet smells from the kitchen, football on the TV, and good friends all around. It's a Happy, Sunny Thanksgiving.

Finding the Scone

Here we are in California to witness the wedding of Lou Jones and Guy. We drove through snow (real one-inch-deep, draping the ground and rooftops, scenic-postcard snow) as we left Ithaca last Friday, and arrived Saturday to a beautiful, Sunny, California afternoon. When Mlle. met us at the airport, she was decked in flipflops and shorts.

I hope there will be time later to tell the story of the Bachelor party and our other adventures, but now I just want to say that after our slumber party at Drama Mama's we (expectant and filled with trepidation) went to the neighborhood Starbucks in hopes that they would have Wuggy Norple's favorite baked-good and symbol of life-as-it-should be: the mini vanilla scone. And there they were, sending their sweet sweet love to us from the pastry case. We ordered 3 and a Kid's milk filled with glee. Once again we were eating vanilla scones with Drama Mama and Princess Punk. Wuggy Norple is very happy to be back.