bring your mommy to work day

i gave mom a tour of my office last week, as she happened to be looking for a ride home. it was actually the first time i've had a family member on board any airplane with more than four seatbelts. mom was as awestruck and excited as any four year old i've ever brought up into the cockpit. (there was even talk of using this photo as her christmas card- i'm not sure what dad will do for his.)

with all due respect, if i were to walk on an airplane as a passenger and see this as i glanced to my left, i think i'd just turn around and see if i could catch the next one.

the man behind the lens

some of you are already familiar with eli's passion for photography. (this includes anyone who has made the mistake of letting him find out that you have a digital camera in your possession.) luckily, st. nick brought him his own starter camera for christmas this year, and he has been taking pictures pretty much non-stop. (i just erased around 100 pictures of the driver's seat of our pontiac bonneville as seen from the rear car seat where he has logged so many hours.)

here is a sampling of some of his more compelling work. subjects of his compositions include front range bison, self portraiture, architecture, and of course, airplanes, airplanes, airplanes...

lars-line, we hardly knew ya'...

i initially instituted the lars-line as a forum for lars-bloggers to stay connected with each other, and open conversation on both lars and non-lars related topics. while it initially flourished, it has since langished, stagnated, and just recently, completely died altogether. in memory of the departed, i will be leaving the lars line up (on the right hand toolbar below the individual profiles) for your parting comments over the next few days before removing it from the blog.

not afraid to get their hands dirty

a hands on art project takes place in the living room. a couple liters of paint in a panoply of bright colors, a few sheets of vellum thin paper, two excitable and slightly mischievous kids and criminally inattentive parental supervision... what could go wrong?

why hide from it?

pen knows she's all that...

say ham & cheese

eli has recently discovered the concept of the "funny" photo face, giving kelley and i a new and profound appreciation for the invention of the digital camera...

cross-cultural christmas

if i seem to have been a bit lackadaisical in my blogging of late, please understand that it's only part of my new year's resolution to approach life with less enthusiasm. i resume posting, however, under threat by kelley of blog commandeering. we tipped our hat to our danish ancestry with a pre-christmas leaving out of shoes on the front porch for santa to fill with treats. caught up in the spirit of multiculturalism, i decided to throw a little chanukah in the mix. since the kids love candles so much, i figured an advent menorah would be the perfect way to count down to christmas. (if this christian perversion of an ancient tradition were not enough to make our jewish friends sick to their stomachs, the kids added their own spin on it- every night they insisted on singing "happy birthday, dear menorah" before blowing out the candles.) now i never thought of my neighborhood as anti-semitic, but come visit us next december and try finding a menorah anywhere in town. wal-mart, target, home depot; i looked anywhere christmas decorations were sold, but found not so much as a single gelt to be found. at last i resorted to some scrap wood and varnish for a makeshift candelabra. as crude as was my workmanship, the christmas menorah was a huge hit, and is currently in the basement with the rest of the christmas decorations.

breakfast on christmas morning was a household favorite- eggs and sausage. this was served, of course, after the more traditional christmas breakfast of  seven pounds of chocolate bells, reindeer shaped snickers bars and pez. our cultural journey concluded with the very american christmas tradition of defiling innocent children with such over-consumerism as to remove all meaning from a once spiritual celebration of faith and agape love. favorite gifts include a pair of jewel encrusted dress up shoes which i have to wrestle off penelope every night before bed, and an atlas of the universe, which has turned conversations in our home from fighter jets and transport aircraft to galaxy clusters and protoplanetary nebulae. the kids pose below with two big ticket items: the renowned sr-71 blackbird, and lovably idiosyncratic sock collector "minty" of whom penelope waxes poetic in a previous post.

raiding the stockings at first light on christmas morning. the last pieces of candy were still in their mouths as they began petitioning to open the wrapped presents...