december pictures

Hanukkah!  And look at us on a chairlift, skiing, with no snow!

Grandpa Peter!  Reading to the girls in the Northshire Bookstore!

Elsie and Theo made these snow globes!

Elsie is learning how to write sentences!  Behold!

Santa!

It's a Hard Knock Life!

Apologies to all our fans for the lapse - we had reached our photo storage upload limit and had to figure out how to work around that.  But now we are back!  And here are pictures from our November trip to NYC.  Immediately upon arrival the girls got out the coveted box of My Little Ponies, as seen here:

GrandKathy took great care of the girls.  Here they are on a trip to get bagels.  Not sure who took this picture since Daddy was off schmoozing somewhere else at the time:

Daddy also did two book readings.  Theo heckled him throughout each one.  She likes to draw while he reads and toss out smartass comments like "I know what's going to happen already.  Come on!"

But the real show stopper event of the trip was a Saturday afternoon spent with Aunt/Godmother Mimmie who took us to see "Annie".  The girls wore the carefully chosen outfits you see below:

Here they are getting in their seats before the show.  Just like Daddy and Aunt Laura did so many years ago...

And here is Theo and Aunt Mim at intermission.  Both of the girls were a bit scared of Miss Hannigan at first and later had questions about which parts of what they saw on stage were real and which were made up.  For instance, they wanted to know if those girls were really orphans, like "in real life" and if Miss Hannigan got arrested "for real" at the end.  

Their sense of drama vs. reality was further confused when they got to meet Sandy, the dog, after the show.  His real name was "Sunny".  Apparently he was saved from the execution table at the shelter at the last minute by a vet tech who recognized his talent.  For real!

And here they are with Emily, the smallest orphan, who is actually 9 years old, and has parents.  This also blew the girls' minds in various ways.  Most impressive to them though was the fact that she slept in a drawer in the play.  They reference this quite often when they play orphan games around the house now.  Oh, aunt Laura, if only you'd had a sister with which to play "orphan"!

The girls even got to play around on the stage set afterwards.  It's nice to have connections the the theater world like Aunt Mimmie!

Another fun thing was we got to see Saoirse and Remony.  Twice.  Here they are riding on the subway, always a fun NYC activity.

The teenager attitude has already begun.  For real.

Arthur's Attic Adventure

I hope everyone had a very happy Thanksgiving! Here are some things that have happened since Halloween:

• The girls went to NYC to see Annie! Since then, I have been asked many questions about Ms. Hannigan being arrested and have been treated to many performances of Tomorrow! and It's the Hard Knock Life! Thank you to Aunt Mim for taking them to a real NYC broadway show and to Grand Kathy for hosting and babysitting. 

• Arthur turned 43! We made him a cake, chocolate with chocolate icing of course, and gave him many presents.

•  Arthur bought a locally-made Have a Heart Trap, told me that his new business plan is to advertise his critter catching services on Craigslist, dressed in a tiny jumpsuit and then ascended into the attic to catch the varmints we were certain lived there. He found nothing which was a relief because the girls were lobbying really hard to make a pet out of whatever we caught in the cage. 

• We celebrated Thanksgiving with the Nehalem Street Vinings and Wisconsin Rocks. Pete's older sister, who is a lawyer in Milwaukie, told us stories about Pete's formative years which have given us some real insight into his character. 

• Then we chopped down a noble fir to use as our Christmas tree. It is perhaps a bit too perfect for me, but the Bradfords in the household prevailed. It is a lot bigger than the Rock's tree, which Arthur believes says "a lot". 

• This morning our neighbors dropped by in their pajamas and helped decorate the tree. Then we took everyone to Reed for some kickball and bike-riding. Walker, who is obsessed with fishing, inspired us to check out the Reed fish-ladder. While searching the rushing waters for signs of steelhead, Walker dropped his peanut butter crackers into the creek. For some reason, Arthur jumped into the creek to retrieve them.  For a few seconds I considered calling 9-11, but he managed to pull himself out, crackers in hand, which Walker declined to eat. Then, soggy pants and all, Arthur performed some incredible aerial stunts on his skateboard. I just can't believe he is 43! 

•  PS We have apparently run out of our allotted photographs on blogger so I cannot post any photos right now.

Post Halloween Joke

Happy Halloween, Big Pink!

Here is the "Vining Clan" at my office's annual Halloween Party, a highly anticipated event. Some of my colleagues believe that I have 4 children with my partner, Henry Vining, and I don't bother to set the record straight.

Theo at Tumbleweed

Here's a fun picture of Theo in the treehouse at Tumbleweed.  Lately Elsie has been talking about how much she misses it there.  She's looking forward to next year when she will have her sister at school with her again, but then they will both miss Tumbleweed, and so will we!

Aunt Anna!

Aunt Anna came west to visit us.  We took her to lovely Sun River, OR, the high desert!  Above you see a picture of her and the girls at Lava Lands.  This a a place where lava is.  We hiked around and skinned our knees there.

      

And we took pictures!

Back at our rented chalet, there was a hot tub.

Sun River is famous for having miles and miles of paved bike trails.  This was exciting because we live on a hill and thus Theo has never really ridden more than a few hundred feet.  This was her longest bike ride ever!

Sometimes she chose to just walk and take in the scenery.

Behold, a video:

Later we went the the High Desert Museum which was full of Mitt Romney supporters and also had a butterfly habitat.  Here you see the girls trying to stand very still in the hopes that a butterfly will land upon them.  Some less obedient children were seen chasing the butterflies and sticking their grubby fingers under their legs, hoisting them up, and then claiming the insects had landed there on their own volition.  Not our girls!

We drove back to Portland and Anna stayed another two days but the pictures from that time would look pale in comparison to what you have now seen.  Theo was very sad when Anna left.  She wore a hat Anna made to remember her by.  Anna taught Elsie to knit which was a mixed blessing because neither Maggie nor I know how to knit and Elsie, in truth, can't do it on her own.  So now she marches around the house with her knitting needles and complaining loudly that the yarn isn't behaving as it should.

After she saw us Anna went to visit this lil' guy.  Hi Braden!

The Full Moon and A Lookout Tower

Theo and I now have Fridays off together so we like to go on outings.  This past Friday, we traveled to Timber Butte Lookout to enjoy the Harvest Moon in the Willamette National Forest, southeast of Eugene. Elsie had a soccer game so she stayed home with AB.

Timber Butte Lookout - thanks Hilary and David!

Theo is not a fan of hiking, but she does like home-making.  As soon as we arrived she set the table for dinner and breakfast while I hiked up and down the trail to unload the car. She will make someone a good house-wife someday. The girls are very interested in the term "house-wife" which they learned from that Michelle Shocked song, Anchorage. 

"How about this spoon, Mama?"

 

 We cooked outside:

what a view! just kidding...

now this is a view!

Theo helped make the bed, of course, and then nursed a baby (a water bag) and played a complex sailing 

 game as the sun set:

"where are all the people?"

can you see the full moon?

 

I wanted to take a photo of the Harvest Moon with our new fancy camera, but couldn't figure out how to get out of automatic mode, so I can't share with you the awesome full moon we experienced. I will share with you that I started to get very worried about the fact that we were very vulnerable in this glass box if some hunters went berserk because of the full moon. 

We survived the night and the next morning we cleaned up:

My housewife!

Shotgun blasts in the forest...

Are the hunters going to shoot us?

Then we went hiking:

When we returned to our car we discovered a very flat tire.  Apparently, the forest roads are covered in gravel made from obsidian. Two hunters came along and helped us change the tire. The wife hunter had shot a 400 pound bear the week before and showed Theo a photo of it.  It is now summer sausage.

On our way home, we stopped by Heather Brinton's house in Eugene.  She is an old friend from Camp Alleghany for Girls. Did you know that Julie Bowen, an Emmy award winning actress, is a Ghany Girl? Will Elsie and Theo be Ghany girls too? what about Ida and Miki?

Our new camera is motorized so you can take about 10 pics/minute.  thanks for looking at all of our photos. 

Elsie and Soccer

Elsie has started playing in a soccer league.  Her team is called "The Attackers".  Below we see her in action.  She's very good at running up and down the field with enthusiasm, but sometimes a little shy to actually kick it.

This was an exciting weekend though because Elsie scored a goal!  And after the game she was awarded the "sportsmanship" medal.  She was very proud.

I think she liked shaking hands at the end best of all.

Oregon Coast Weekend

We rented this sweet beachside house on the Oregon coast last weekend.  And we took lots of pictures.  

We rented the house with The Ono Family, from Tumbleweed.  But their kids don't go there anymore because they graduated.  We only hang out with half-asians.

Maggie just let out an audible fart here:

Could this be our xmas card?

Theo changed her outfit about ten times over the course of two days.

Shortly after this photo was taken Theo fell and soaked herself thoroughly.  Outfit change!

Believe or not this swinging from suspended driftwood game did not end well...

Same with this game with the large rock...

They are roasting pilsbury puffy bread on sticks.  Delicious!

And it's not a Vining campfire without s'mores!

This beach is called Manzanita, by the way.  1 and 1/2 hours from Portland.  We'll be back!